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Axpona, the Audio Expo of North America, is geared up for its premiere next Friday in Jacksonville, Florida. The new Show runs March 5–7 at the 350-room Wyndham Riverwalk Hotel, which overlooks the St. Johns River and is just 15 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. Sponsored by Stereophile, which will blog live from the show, Axpona is already looking like a winner. Impressive figures for advance Internet registration (discounted through March 1) indicate that Axpona might meet or even surpass attendance at last year's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, in Denver.
BluePort Jazz's catalog of 15 titles, recorded in jazz clubs and studios by Jim Merod, is now downloadable in lossless FLAC format from the House of Linn website. Merod—a PhD professor, an author of numerous books, a music critic for Enjoy the Music.com, and an equipment reviewer for Positive Feedback Online—is known for recording with as few microphones as possible and mixing everything live to two tracks in high-resolution (24-bit/96kHz) PCM format.
BluePort artists include Jaime Valle (Latin jazz), Noel Jewkes Quartet, Gene Bertoncini (guitar), Joe Wilder–Marshall Royal Quintet, Dale…
The 23rd Salon Son & Image high-fidelity show, cosponsored by Stereophile, takes place in Montreal's Hilton Bonaventure March 26–28. (An additional day, March 25, is reserved for the trade and press.) With 10,000 to 12,000 attendees expected, including a sizable American contingent and several thousand Canadians from outside Quebec province, who will take advantage of bilingual presentations and literature and the anticipated absence of snow, SSI remains the largest North America audio show that is open to the public.
One feature of SSI sure to receive attention in Stereophile's daily…
Three years after Dynaudio released its highly coveted 30th Anniversary Sapphire loudspeaker in a limited run of 2000 units, the final pair will be sold online by Danish auctioneer Lauritz. All proceeds from the auction, which begins Wednesday, May 12, and ends at 2pm MEST on Saturday, May 22, will benefit Doctors Without Borders.
The pair, finished in exclusive Sapphire Blue clear piano lacquer over a natural veneer of bird's-eye maple, bears the serial number "No.1,000/1,000" engraved on a metal plate on the rear panel. During the auction, the pair will be on display in Lauritz's…
The long-awaited US launch of Passionato.com, intended as the World Wide Web's "premier destination for classical music connoisseurs," has finally happened. Passionato, which has no membership fee, offers the largest collection of classical-music downloads in CD-quality, DRM-free FLAC and 320kbps MP3 formats yet assembled online.
Passionato's catalog is rich in offerings from Alia Vox (with Jordi Savall), Analekta, BIS, Chandos, Decca, Delos, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, LPO, LSO Live, Naxos, Ondine, Pentatone, Philips, SDG (with John Eliot Gardner), Signum Classics, Telarc, Virgin…
Two highly respected product lines, one founded 32 years ago, and another whose pedigree dates from 1932, have returned to the North American market. Theory & Application Elektroakustic (T+A) products, from Germany, has returned to the US and Canada thanks to Dynaudio North America, and the venerable line of Wharfedale loudspeakers will once again reach the US from the UK, thanks to the dedication of Sound Import, LLC, of Hopedale, Massachusetts.
T+A, founded in 1978, designs and manufactures all its products in Germany. In the six years (2002–2008) T+A was imported into US by the…
Arkivmusic.com is an Internet retailer of classical media (CDs, SACDs, and DVDs), including its own licensed CD reissues of out-of-print classical titles from labels major, minor, and micro. ArkivCDs are bit-for-bit copies of the original masters, burned on demand to CD-R and shipped to the customer with on-demand printed booklets and liner notes, as Wes Phillips wrote in December 2006.
Arkivmusic.com has recently added to its ArkivCD program the critically acclaimed 2-CD set of Nathaniel Rosen's J.S. Bach solo cello Suites from John Marks Records. That set was Stereophile's "Recording of…
After a gap of far too many years, Northern California again has a high-end audio show. Sponsored by Constantine Soo's DaGoGo.com, the fledgling California Audio Show will take place July 30 –August 1 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Emeryville. That location —next to Interstate 80, just across the bridge from San Francisco, midway between Oakland and Berkeley, and a free (albeit time-sensitive) shuttle ride from the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) MacArthur line—is expected to draw a good cross-section of audiophiles from throughout the Bay Area.
Soo began contemplating organizing the show in…
Reflecting dramatic changes in the high-end industry, British loudspeaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins has developed for its products a new US retail outlet. Beginning in October, audio shoppers will be able to audition and buy the company's loudspeakers in Best Buy's chain of Magnolia stores.
B&W's entire line, from in-wall speakers through the flagship 800 series, will be available in Magnolia's six remaining standalone Audio Video stores, as well as in its ever-increasing number of Magnolia Design Centers. The balance of the Magnolia chain, which occupies some 350 locations…
Klaus Heymann has some surprising news. During an in-person chat in the lobby of San Francisco's Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the founder of the label that turned the classical-music recording industry on its ear revealed that, in the US, classical-music sales for the labels that Naxos distributes are stable.
This year, Naxos' sales are up 6% for CDs and down 3% for DVDs. Taking into account some big DVD promotions in 2009, even DVD sales are stable. These figures fly in the face of what's happening in the pop-music industry, where US sales of physical CDs are decreasing 10–15% per year. It…