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Sometimes, wonderful things go unnoticed. Thus did Stereophile miss that, in June 2007, at its 31st annual conference, in London, UK, the International Audio Engineering Society issued two Awards of Excellence in the category of Professional Engineering. One, which we learned about from a Minnetonka Audio press release, went to Dorian Records (see the May 2008 issue of Stereophile, pp.14–15). The other went to AIX Records of Southern California. The award is for John Gorka's The Gypsy Life, one of more than 50 high-resolution recordings available from AIX in DVD-Audio/Video surround sound and…
Some musicians are remembered for a single remarkable album; some are remembered for a hit song—Bo Diddley will always be remembered for a beat. That eponymous beat—a rhumba-inflected Bomp a-bomp-a-bomp, bomp, bomp—may well have been "the most plagiarized rhythm in rock," as Rolling Stone claimed in 2005.
Diddley was born in December 1928 as either Ellas Otha Bates or Otha Ellis Bates (like many details of Diddley's life, he recounted several versions of the story). He was raised by his mother's first cousin, Gussie McDaniel, who became his legal guardian when he was six. He eventually…
It has been an action packed week on the judicial copyright battlefield. One June 11, a federal district court upheld the first sale doctrine , ruling in UMG v Troy Augusto that sales of promotional CDs did not constitute a copyright violation.
For years, record labels have distinguished promotional copies of recording with a sticker or stamp proclaiming "promotional use—not for resale." Sometimes the promo copies have bonus tracks not on the retail recordings, sometimes they have different art, but frequently the only thing that distinguishes them is the stamp or sticker (or, on LPs, a…
On June 11, Recording Industry vs the People, Ray Beckerman's popular blogspot site covering the recording industry's ongoing series of litigations, revealed that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had voluntarily and "without prejudice" filed a motion on May 27 to dismiss its ongoing complaint, Warner v Cassin, which maintained that posting files to a peer-to-peer network was distribution of those files, whether or not actual distribution occurred. This is known in copyright law as "making available."
If the trial had continued, Warner v Cassin would have been one of…
T.H.E. Show, aka The Home Entertainment Show, has put out a welcome mat for members of "authentic Audiophile Societies throughout the globe."1 Scheduled for January 9–11, 2009, in Las Vegas, the same dates as the Consumer Electronics Show down the road, T.H.E. Show has for the first time offered members of audiophile societies paid access to over 100 anticipated active-display suites in both the St. Tropez and Alexis Park hotels.
Society members will also be able to buy products from a number of vendors of software and rare LPs and CDs; their Alexis Park salesroom, the Parthenon, is…
PSB came to New York in late July to debut its new line of loudspeakers, giving journos an advance peek at them before the official launch at the CEDIA Conference in early September. Paul Barton, showing a lot of emotion for a normally reserved Canadian, was frankly in love with the four new loudspeakers.
"People simply don't imagine how much loudspeaker $2000/pair can buy now. Yes, I'd like to think people expect to get solid engineering from our loudspeakers, but our designs have always been not so stylish. Last year, we changed that with the Synchrony line, but with Imagine, we started…
As it has for the last 12 years, The Cable Company, along with many of its vendors, is dedicating August to help some of "the poorest people in the most ravaged regions of the world."
Each year CARE helps The Cable Company line up an additional matching grant of at least 5:1 (and as much as 10:1 in the past) from a large donor for its total contributions. When The Cable Company contributes 5% of a sale (all sales) in August, and this is matched by one of the participating vendors, this 10% total donation also receives another five times this amount in matching funds.
The Cable Co…
Let's do the It's a Wonderful Life exercise, shall we? Imagine what popular music would sound like today without Jerry Wexler. Aretha Franklin would have never returned to her gospel roots, Ray Charles would have continued imitating Charles Brown and Nat Cole, Stax would have been a tiny regional record label, and denatured white covers of R&B songs would dominate the charts. In fact, the music we know today as rhythm and blues would still be called "race music"—Wexler having coined R&B while working at Billboard in 1949.
Perhaps, in the 56 years that have passed since Wexler…
On August 14, Logitech International announced that it intended to acquire privately held Ultimate Ears for $34 million in cash. "Ultimate Ears is a perfect fit for Logitech and our audio business," said Gerald P. Quindlen, Logitech's president and CEO. "Since its inception, Ultimate Ears has been driven by innovation, close ties to its customers, and the desire to enable an immersive audio experience. Logitech's success has been built on using a deep understanding of our customers to create products that let people immerse themselves in their pursuits."
To people familiar with Ultimate…
The first day of CEDIA, like the first day of CES, is clogged with highly structured press conferences by the major international electronics companies and, since the show floor is not yet ready for primetime and there is the minute possibility that they might actually say something interesting, all the press faithfully parade from one to the next. Sure, I am little less enthusiastic than most since my, and, I hope, our interests are focused on audio, much less so on video and progressively less and less on home integration and central vacuum systems.
But, mirabile dictu, in the course of…