Most DVD-V players sold today have built-in DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding along with multichannel audio outputs, which music companies can take advantage of by encoding either format on the DVD-Audio disc along…
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It might stand to reason that the first market for DVD-Audio discs will likely be consumers who already own DVD-Video machines. It also stands to reason that a large number of consumers who have set up a DVD-Video player in their systems have also added surround-sound speakers in their audio/video rooms, and are looking for new software to take advantage of the extra channels.
Consumers attending the Home Entertainment 2001 Show in NYC, May 11–13, 2001, will have a unique opportunity to speak with and learn from the home entertainment industry's leading experts. As part of the three-day audio and video extravaganza, the Show will offer educational seminars and panel discussions—included with the admission ticket price on a first come, first served basis. This is a rare opportunity for consumers to meet with legendary industry journalists, manufacturers, dealers, and others.
Home Entertainment 2001 is co-sponsored by Stereophile, Home Theater, and Stereophile…
Music industry executives may have a special dread of this year's Halloween festivities.
On Halloween evening (Friday, October 31), a loosely-organized group of music fans plans to launch a global boycott against the industry, with multiple "Raves Against the Bullies." The effort's aims include a cessation of lawsuits against file-sharers, more favorable contracts for recording artists, and changing "the way music is distributed and marketed," according to a Music News Alerts! item posted October 7.
Backers of the boycott are pushing for record labels to sign a "Music Artist's Bill of…
Want to improve your hearing? Have someone tickle your toes, or lightly stroke the palm of your hand. Sounds crazy, but it works, and things get even weirder.
Every day, in everything we do, our body collects information from our five senses and combines it into a coherent picture that helps to guide our actions and, in evolutionary terms, helps to keep us alive. It's a well-known phenomenon, but it has long been believed that this process, which scientists call "sensory integration," occurs in the brain at relatively high cognitive levels, in an area known as the associative cortex. But…
The music business is a $13-billion-a-year industry, but the high-end audio industry reaches only a tiny fraction of the music lovers that number represents. "Everybody loves music, so why don't they love specialty audio?" was the question addressed to a group of industry experts at one of a series of AudioCafe.com-sponsored panel discussions on Friday, January 7, at the Alexis Park, during the 2000 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The panelists—Ray Kimber of Kimber Kable, Janice Mancuso of Reference Recordings, Peter Noerbaek of PBN Audio, Russell Kibbee of TagIt, Doug Schneider of…
Saturday, September 26, thousands of enthusiastic audio-savvy attendees began swarming through the massive cavern of the Moscone Center's North Hall in San Francisco. They will continue to swarm until late Tuesday, September 29, the last day of the 105th Audio Engineering Society Convention. The convention has attracted hundreds of companies whose products are extravagantly displayed in the huge space beneath the Yerba Buena Gardens. Demonstrations of new products and technologies also take place in smaller rooms off the main floor. Research papers are being presented in meetings…
Starting in 1984, Anthony H. Cordesman and Martin Colloms filed several reports on the Magnepan Magneplanar MGIIIA loudspeaker. Cordesman wrote, "In a world which seemed doomed to finding out just how small and dull it could make acoustic-suspension boxes, the Magnepans reminded me that speakers could produce a large open soundstage, real dynamics, and musical life."
Next, from April 1993, Larry Greenhill reviews the B&W Matrix 805 loudspeaker. Greenhill notes, "Although the price is high for a two-way minimonitor, the 805 fits right into a growing high-end marketplace for such…
Last week, WorldSpace announced that it has launched what it describes as "the world's largest digital audio broadcast system." The new system is based on a satellite radio service that recently began transmitting a wide array of multilingual radio programming across the entire African continent.
According to WorldSpace, its AfriStar satellite is gearing up to supply more than 25 channels of news, music, entertainment, and educational programming. The company claims that each of three beams from the solar-powered satellite will cover an enormous territory (14 million square kilometers),…
Another crucial piece of the DVD-Audio puzzle fell into place recently when the WG-4 (Working Group 4) DVD-Audio Working Group approved the adoption of MLP (see previous articles 1, 2) as the lossless algorithm for DVD-Audio at its August 5th meeting in Tokyo. WG-4 will require official approval from its supervising organizations, the Technical Coordination Group and Steering Committee---considered a formality at this point.
MLP, which stands for Meridian Lossless Packing, is a digital audio coding technology developed by Bob Stuart, Peter Craven, and the late Michael Gerzon. Lossless…
Now that the big odometer has finally turned over, John Atkinson takes a moment to look back at the last 50 years of music reproduction—the era of high-end audio. Writing in "Happy New Audio Millennium," JA offers a little perspective on where audiophiles have traveled this last half century, and where we haven't.
Next, Jonathan Scull likes clean living—at least when it comes to his audio system. In "Fine Tunes" #6 he reveals his favorite tips and tricks for getting a system to sound its best.
Finally, we offer Kalman Rubinson's review of the Mark Levinson No.360 D/A converter. Kal…