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…
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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).
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.
On October 27, MarketWatch reported that EMI Music's chairman and CEO, Alain Levy, told an audience, "The CD as it is right now is dead." Speaking at the London Business School, Levy said that 60% of consumers rip CDs into their home computers in order to listen to them on digital music players.
Don't count out physical media entirely, Levy admonished listeners. "You're not going to offer your mother-in-law iTunes downloads for Christmas, but we have to be much more innovative in the way we sell physical content. . . . By the beginning of next year, none of our content will come without…
Free, as in "no charge": RealTraps reports that it has upgraded ModeCalc, a graphical room-mode prediction software that it offers as a free download (Windows only, 1.3MB) to help people design new listening rooms, or assess the low-frequency response in existing rooms. The company says the new version of ModeCalc offers "several clever features, including a display that better identifies modes that are too close together, and a revised and expanded tutorial in the included Help system."
RealTraps also offers a Windows version of its Frequency-Distance Calculator, which, it claims, "lets…
Kalman Rubinson enthused over JL Audio's Fathom f113 powered subwoofer in his November "Music in the Round" column. Unfortunately, brainfade on my part when I wrote the text for the cover of that issue of Stereophile meant that the subwoofer was credited to "JL Labs." And in all the proof-reading that goes on while an issue of the magazine is being prepared, we all noted a) that the words "JL Labs" were both spelled correctly on the cover and b) that the words "JL Audio" were also spelled correctly on the contents page and all the way through Kals's column.
Not one of us, however,…
On Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson's Swiss Radio Days, Vol.15: JATP Lausanne 1953 (TCB 02152), the performances are so extraordinary that only the music itself can fully tell the tale.
This latest release in the Swiss Radio Days series from TCB: The Montreux Jazz Label, reveals Fitzgerald and Peterson in their youthful primes. That they even performed together was something of a miracle. Fitzgerald, who in this period usually traveled with her own trio, was in no financial position to engage the famed Peterson to accompany her on piano. Leave it jazz impresario Norman Granz to pair the…
One cliché that never loses its aptness is "end of an era." And it certainly applies to the passing on October 29 of SME’s founder, Alastair Robertson-Aikman. While there remain a handful of survivors from the original "golden age" of audio, few of them were still active in 2006. AR-A, as he was known to friends and staff, wasn’t simply still active: he was still tweaking his sound system and planning new products.
His achievements span nearly the last half-century, his seminal Model 3009 tonearm first making its appearance in 1959. It would stay in production into the 21st century,…