Forrester's Josh Bernoff explains, "There is no denying that times are tough for the music business, but not because of downloading. Based on surveys of 1000 online consumers, we see no evidence of decreased CD buying…
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What music lovers have suspected for months, and record labels vehemently deny, has apparently been confirmed by Forrester Research: Piracy is not responsible for the 15% drop in music sales in the past two years. According to a new report from Forrester, "Labels can restore industry growth by making it easier for people to find, copy, and pay for music on their own terms."
Classical music in general, and audiophile label Telarc in particular, scored big in this year's annual Outmusic Awards. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici, whose music has recently found an ardent champion in conductor Robert Spano, won Outstanding New Recording: Instrumental for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's Telarc recording of Paul Revere's Ride. Telarc veteran and Grammy Award-winning producer Thomas C. Moore, who assisted in the recording, received the Outstanding Producer award. In addition, soprano Melissa Fogarty received Outstanding New Recording: Debut Female for…
When I visited NHT's manufacturing facility in early May, I was struck by a comment managing director Chris Byrne made when describing NHT's Xd loudspeaker, which employs sophisticated digital signal processing (DSP) for its crossovers and equalization functions. "You do realize that we could have never incorporated such complex slopes in a physical crossover," Byrne proselytized.
I did? Well, once the obvious had been pointed out to me, I did. Perhaps, I thought, this is what all that cheap computing power is really for in audio—not those bogus DSP "effects" that the mainstream…
Hansen Audio: Canadian loudspeaker manufacturer Hansen Audio, best known for "high-end luxury lifestyle speakers," has named Wes Bender senior director of US sales and marketing.
Hansen Audio was founded by Lars Hansen, a lifelong electrical engineer, who founded his first loudspeaker company, Legacy (not the contemporary company Legacy Audio of Springfield, IL), in the 1970s. He also worked at Alpine Audio and was president of Dahlquist. Hansen designed his company's $60,000/pair The King flagship loudspeaker to compete with—surpass, according to Bender—the best-known high-performance…
NaimNet: On June 20, at the London CEDIA Expo, Naim announced its entry into the custom integration/home systems market with a series of products and technologies called NaimNet. NaimNet is described as "a combination of Naim's experience in audio and video together with the IP technology of StreamNet™ licensed from NetStreams® LLC."
StreamNet, Naim says, enables easy control of multiple sources and uniquely allows full-bandwidth audio, metadata, and control signals to be distributed throughout a house over its IP home network. It also integrates with A/V, heating, lighting, and security…
It's baaack!
On June 21, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) chairman and CEO Dan Glickman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning Hollywood, Inc.'s favorite punching bag: "The Analog Hole: Can Congress Protect Copyright and Promote Innovation?"
The "analog hole" refers to content that has been protected by digital rights management (DRM). When broadcast as a digital signal, the DRM prevents copying; however, when the signal has been converted to analog, DRM is no longer active, which means it can be recorded, transported, or otherwise manipulated. "…
I was saddened to hear of the untimely death of David Smith, vice-president of audio engineering and R&D at Sony Music Studios in New York. David, who was 55, died Saturday June 17, at the home of his mother on Long Island.
I had been acquainted with David since he had given me a tour of Sony's Manhattan facility in the early 1990s. He had always been generous with his time, constructively critiquing my recordings, and giving me demonstrations of Sony's DSD technology.
David had a long association with the Audio Engineering Society's New York Section, having served on its…
"I don't get why some audiophiles still think that saving data using a lossless compression scheme like FLAC or Apple Lossless sounds any different than an uncompressed CD file," says Sonos founder and VP of Sales and Marketing Thomas S. Cullen between bites of white fish shish kebab. "It's just mathematics, and the results are sonically identical, but you save half the space on your hard drive."
Sonos VP Thomas Cullen does a demo.
We're taking a break for lunch, and Cullen is animated while he talks. In fact, he appears to be an animated blur the entire time we are with…
After I decided to join Stereophile as its editor in the spring of 1986, I took a road trip through Europe. The ostensible reason for the trip was to attend a hi-fi show in Lucerne, Switzerland, but the reality was that, faced with the transatlantic dislocation, I wanted to touch base with places that had meant much to me over the preceding years. I took the train to Paris, where I spent a day taking what might have been my last look at the Impressionist paintings (then at the Jeu de Paume gallery, now at the Musée d'Orsay), then drove the rest of the way to Lucerne with KEF's then marketing…
Bob Stuart, chairman and co-founder of Meridian, will deliver a lecture on active loudspeakers to the UK Section of the Audio Engineering Society in London on Tuesday, July 11. Although Bob has been a champion of active speakers for 30 years, he has, surprisingly, delivered only one previous paper on the subject, at the AES UK Conference earlier this year. In this lecture he will expand on that presentation and be able to discuss the topic more fully with the audience.
The lecture begins at 7pm in the Royal Academy of Engineering, Great Peter Street, Westminster. Entrance is free for…