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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…
George Harrison, the youngest Beatle, and the least comfortable with the band's renown, died November 29 at 58, following a battle with cancer. Harrison, one of rock's most distinctive guitarists, was also a songwriter and singer of the first water. It could be said that it was his misfortune to be the third songwriter in a band that featured the two most significant tunesmiths of his era. On the other hand, without Harrison's unique, exquisitely tasteful, musically wide-ranging guitar playing—which, in its consistent submission to the requirements of the individual songs, rarely drew…
Forget the SACD/DVD-Audio format wars, a more interesting (and potentially more devastating to consumers) battle is brewing among companies racing to add copy protection technology and other restrictions to compact discs.
Macrovision revealed in July that its SafeAudio process was being secretly deployed in tests in California (see previous), and in August, SunnComm announced that it had reached an agreement with Sonopress of Germany for implementation of its MediaCloQ technology in Sonopress' manufacturing facilities located all over Europe.
Now the developer of the Cactus Data…
Editor's Note: Stereophile's new release, Bravo!, is available for order through the Recordings page of this website.
In a perfect world, the conditions for capturing a live musical performance on tape would be under the control of the recording engineer. But rarely do these conditions exist in real life, as Stereophile's John Atkinson discovered back in July and August of 1998 while recording the 1998 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
Atkinson had used his favorite audiophile microphone placements on Stereophile's three previous recordings of the Festival, but found that option…
He's got his own bonds on Wall Street, houses all over the world, a fashion-model wife, and more wealth than any other rock star to date. But what he really wanted was his own Internet Service Provider. As a result, David Bowie goes online September 1 with the first rock-star-based ISP: BowieNet.
According to the new company, UltraStar Internet Services, the official announcement of the launch was to coincide with the release of the EMI Records compilation The Best of David Bowie, 1974/1979 on August 23. However, the CD, which contains details of the online service, was prematurely…
Day one of the Home Entertainment Show is always set aside for the press (and "the industry," which is an apparently elastic term meaning "everybody else"), but this year it seems as though there's more press than ever. Every press conference—and there was a steady stream of them—was standing room only and the halls were already thronged with showgoers. It looks like HE2005 is already a hit.
The day started with a Samsung event, designed to announce an alliance between the Korean electronics manufacturer and the X-Box division of Microsoft Corp. to "elevate gaming to the next level…