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…
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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.
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…
According to a recent Consumer Electronics Association's (CEA) press release, "CE Industry to Surpass $174 billion in 2010, Reach Record High by 2011," sales forecasts are far more optimistic than had been expected. While the figures aren't easily translatable to the high-end market (which the CEA identifies as "high-performance audio"), some consumer-electronic (CE) trends give cause for qualified optimism, and provide clues as to which products may prove most profitable for manufacturers and dealers.
At the start of 2010, the CEA predicted that total CE revenues would be down 7.8%, and…
Even as editing continues on his forthcoming Stereophile recording of Brahms' Handel Variations and Schumann's Symphonic Études, Canadian pianist Robert Silverman is set to perform and re-record all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas. Silverman's eight-concert series of Beethoven sonata performances and recordings will take place in San Jose's lovely Le Petit Trianon Theatre, beginning this coming Thursday, September 9 and ending on April 14, 2011.
The San Jose concert series, produced by Michael Silver of Audio High in Mountain View, California, will be recorded by Marc Willsher and…
Back in Atlanta's World Congress Center for the second year it is hot (around 90°F) and humid outside but it is cool at the 2010 CEDIA Exposition. On the very first full day, I found a slew of interesting new loudspeakers and that's despite having seen less than a third of the Show floor. Undoubtedly more will be discovered but it is great to say that all of the most intriguing new ones are relatively inexpensive.
First off, Sandy Gross's new company Golden Ear Technology offered a tidy line of clean-sounding overachievers. Even the top of the line Triton Two Tower is only $2500/pair for…
I start my second report from the 2010 CEDIA Exposition by returning to MartinLogan. As well as their $2000/pair ElectroMotion electrostatic hybrid that I described in my first report from CEDIA, the Kansas company showed the appealing new 2-way Theos. This hand-built floorstander combines a 9.2"-wide by 44"-tall XStat electrostatic transducer with a 8" aluminum-cone woofer in a bass reflex enclosure. Its large electrostatic radiator and passive woofer can be bi-wired or not with a unique tool-less binding-post design. At $5000/pair, the Theos will be the most affordable speaker in the…