Great American beat out Trans World Entertainment, which stated that it intended to continue operating at least some Tower stores, with a single bid increment of $500,000. Trans World, which operates approximately 1100 stores, almost all of them in shopping malls, has recently acquired other music retailers, including Sam Goody and Wherehouse Music…
search
Even after a two-day auction and federal bankruptcy court approval of a $134.3 million bid by the Great American Group, which has stated that it plans to liquidate the music retailer, it's not precisely clear what is in store for Tower Records.
Surprise! If you love Beethoven, Schnittke, Reich, and Richard Strauss, and frequently play classical music on your iPod or hard drive, you're far from alone. Results of an Internet poll of classical music listeners commissioned by the British magazine Gramophone reveal that 75% of those surveyed use 21st-century media—everything from PCs to MP3 players—and 57% have ripped some of their classical CD collection to another digital format. In fact, 20% of respondents not only download classical music legally, but prefer to listen to it on their MP3 or other digital music player.
James Jolly…
A four-day break between the Top Audio Show in Milan (September 14–17) and the Hi-Fi News Show in London (September 22–24) presented the perfect opportunity to accept a longstanding invitation from speaker manufacturer Focal-JMlab to visit its manufacturing facilities in France.
After the short flight from Milan, Todd Hurry, of the company's US distributor AudioPlus Services, met me at the Lyon airport and we drove for a few hours to the picturesque French village of Bourbon-Lancy (pop. 7000) on the Loire River, near the wine regions of Dijon and Beaujolais. That evening we wined and…
On July 1, 1986, Advanced Audio Systems opened for business. On Saturday, November 11, it's going to celebrate with what Curtis Havens calls "an open format seminar" at the Sheraton Tacoma Hotel (1320 Broadway Plaza, Tacoma, WA 98402. Tel: (253) 572-3200).
"We've been dealing with audiophiles for 20 years, so we know they're a knowledgeable crowd," Havens told Stereophile. "We thought it would be great to augment that knowledge with the insights of some real experts. We've invited Richard Vandersteen of Vandersteen Audio; Steve Silberman, Ayre Acoustics' national sales manager; Joe Harley…
If you didn't follow Paul Messenger's 2006 Hi-Fi News Show Report—and really, you missed some fine reporting if you didn't—you may be unaware of the fact that Apogee Acoustics has been reborn in the Antipodes.
Graeme Keet (aka Graz), long known for his repairs and rebuilding of Apogee's magnetic planar loudspeakers, has obtained the rights to the Apogee brand name and the domain name www.apogeeacoustics.com. At the London show, Graz demonstrated his first new product, the $25,000 Synergy 1.5 loudspeakers, which, Graz says, "used the 1 ohm Scintilla as the benchmark."
"The…
Tipped off by Stereophile reader David Goodwin, I recently visited the San Francisco Airport Museum's beautifully thought-out and executed exhibit The History of Audio: The Engineering of Sound. Installed to coincide with the 121st convention of the Audio Engineering Society, held at San Francisco's Moscone Center October 5–8, the exhibit runs through May 2007 in the North Connect Gallery of the airport's Terminal 3 (footnote 1).
In a large array of plastic-enclosed cases on either side of an exceedingly long, glass-enclosed passageway lit by a combination of natural and fluorescent light…
It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that an audiophile in possession of a good hi-fi must be in want of room treatment. The problem, most audiophiles agree, is that said treatment tends to be expensive, big, and fugly. Nucore Technologies, Inc. of Hillsborough, TN and RealTraps of New Milford, CT have some innovative new solutions.
Cathedral Sound Room Dampening Panels: Robert Stein, of Ultra Systems, Inc., which distributes the Cathedral Sound Room Dampening Panels, describes them as "surprisingly small (11" x 16" x 2"), dècor- friendly, but uniquely powerful tools for reducing…
On October 19, 2006, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) honored the latest 12 members of the CEA Hall of Fame at its awards dinner at the San Francisco CEA Industry Forum.
The 12 honorees were:
Jack Doyle, founding president of Pioneer America.
Robert Galvin, chairman of Motorola.
Dr. George Heilmeier, leader of the team that created the first commercial liquid crystal display (LCD).
Dr. Nick Holonyak, Jr., inventor of the light-emitting diode (LED)
Howard Ladd, leader of three companies: Concord Electronics, Sanyo, and Fisher.
Alfred J. (A.J.)…
Logitech International, the Swiss computer'n'communications peripherals manufacturer, announced on October 19 that it had acquired Slim Devices, Inc., the home-network-music-systems pioneer that manufactures the Squeezebox and Transporter.
According to the Logitech press release, the purchase price was "$20 million in cash, plus a possible performance-based payment, tied to reaching certain future revenue targets."
Slim Devices was founded in 2001 by Sean Adams, later joined by chief technology officer Dean Blackketter. Slim Devices has been dedicated to open-source product…
As we reported in early October, Ayre Acoustics' founder and president Charles Hansen was injured in a bicycling accident. Hansen has established a weblog to express his appreciation for the "outpouring of concern from my family, friends, and the audiophile community" and to help keep us all abreast of news of his continuing rehabilitation.
Charlie's Blog also allows you to post comments.