Harman agreed to be acquired for $120 per share last April, a price Bloomberg.com estimated as a 17% increase over its traded value at the time. Since then, the market has soured on high-yield debt and there have been predictions of a flat—not to say slowing—US market. To make matters worse, Harman posted a June quarter operating…
search
The Goldman Sachs Capital Partners/Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. $8 billion buyout of Harman International Industries, Inc. announced last April may not go through, according to "two people familiar with the matter," Bloomberg.com reported September 21.
Philip O'Hanlon, formerly US marketing director for Halcro, has a new project. His distribution company, On a Higher Note, is bringing Japanese high-end company Luxman back to the United States.
Luxman was founded as Lux Corp. in 1925 by brothers T. Hayakawa and K. Yoshikawa, who manufactured radios for the just-established new broadcast medium. After several years of designing and assembling radios, the brothers decided to vertically integrate the company, manufacturing components in-house to cut costs and assure quality.
In 1931, Lux developed a magnetic pickup for its LUX 1730…
There's a new drive-unit manufacturing company on the block, but it's really just the same old guys who brought you VIFA, ScanSpeak, and DST—the original pros from Dover, in other words.
Scandinavian Audio Research (ScAR) has announced a product line to be called SB Acoustics, which will consist of a 1" soft-dome tweeter, 4" midrange, 5" midwoofer, 6" midwoofer, 10" woofer, 12" woofer, and 15" woofer. All are newly developed from the drawing board up and feature a proprietary cone mixture called Norecx, as well as new chassis designs and a fully optimized, low-distortion magnet system.…
EMI and Virgin Classics, one of the oldest and two of the most respected names in classical music, have undertaken a series of audiophile-friendly initiatives designed to strengthen their online presence. At the start of September, the labels together launched the EMI and Virgin Classics Listening Club. Open to music lovers who purchase new EMI or Virgin Classics discs marked with the Opendisc logo, the club's "exclusive" online environment offers participants the opportunity to build relationships with some of the labels' top artists.
On placing an Opendisc CD in a computer and creating…
On September 25, Amazon announced that its Amazon MP3 download store was open as a "public beta" test. Amazon claims it has "more than two million songs by more than 180,000 artists from over 20,000 major and independent labels," which makes it somewhat less diverse than Apple's iTunes Store, which claims six million songs. However, Amazon MP3 has a few advantages in its corner: its MP3s are higher-resolution, variable bit-rate 256kpbs with no digital rights management—and they are cheaper, 89–99¢ per track, as opposed to iTunes' 99¢ for its 128kbps AAC files (or $1.29 for iTunes+ files,…
On September 26, Showstoppers had its "digital holidays" event in Manhattan. If you aren't a member of the gadget press, you probably won't know about Showstoppers, but it's a press event that gathers all manner of gadgets, gizmos, and computer peripherals under one roof, adds in an open bar and free food, and invites anybody with a press credential to come mingle and ogle the new products. The events are well-run, well-attended, and almost never have much of interest for Stereophile readers.
I'd decided to give this year's event a pass, when I received a last-minute invitation to talk to…
ArkivMusic.com has just signed a deal with Warner Classics to reissue, on demand, out-of-print recordings from Teldec, Erato, and Warner Classics. The site's first 300 offerings from the Warner USA catalog, available at the end of October, will join the more than 4000 other out-of-print titles from EMI, Sony/BMG, Universal Music Group, and two dozen independent classical music labels now available on demand from ArkivMusic on ArkivCD. An additional 1000 ArkivCD reissue titles should become available by the end of 2007.
To someone who hasn't visited the classical-music department of a…
Radiohead, whose last recording, Hail to the Thief, debuted at number three on Billboard's top 200 chart in 2004, announced that its new recording, In Rainbows, will be available as a DRM-free download on October 10. The new twist, however, is that consumers can pay any amount they wish for it.
"No really," the band's website says. "It's up to you." There have been no reports of any bid being rejected as being too low—although there is a $1 processing charge.
Actually, the download is only one option. For $80, fans can buy a physical release that includes two CDs (one a "bonus…
On October 4, a federal jury in Duluth, MN found Jammie Thomas liable for copyright infringement, imposing a damages assessment of $220,000 ($9250 for each of 24 songs). It was the first jury trial resulting from the series of lawsuits the recording industry began in September 2003. Since most of those suits were settled out of court (average settlement: $4000) or defaulted, Capitol Records v. Thomas was the rare case to actually go to court and in front of a jury. It was interesting in ways other than its seemingly high damages.
Crucial to the outcome was judge Michael J. Davis' ruling…
That, somehow, the "absolute sound" of live music is locked up within the grooves or pits of the discs we play and can be retrieved in its entirety if only we had a a good enough playback system is one of the enduring myths in high-end audio. Yet the art of recording is just that, an art, and it is entirely possible that a better playback system will sound worse with some recordings. And with the mainstream press telling would-be audiophiles that low–bit-rate MP3s are of "CD quality" and that even CD is overkill for audiophile sound quality, why would anyone need high-resolution recordings?…