search

Camelot's Howard Schilling takes new position at Genesis Technologies

More high-end audio company musical chairs: Howard Schilling, co-founder and Vice President of Sales and Marketing of Camelot Technology, will now also join Genesis Technologies as National Sales Manager after having "quietly" worked with them in the past.

While at the now apparently defunct Audio Alchemy company as a Regional and National Sales Manager, Howard had also previously worked with Mark L. Schifter, currently Executive Vice President at Genesis. Howard will continue to run Camelot Technology with his father Mel while helping Mark manage Genesis' US dealer base.

Genesis…

Ruth Laredo: 1937–2005

Ruth Laredo, a classical pianist whose style combined passionate ferocity with refined elegance, died May 25 of ovarian cancer, which she had battled for four years. Her last performance was May 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in one of her long-running performance/lecture sessions known as "Concertos with Commentary," a format that was so popular that she had begun to offer it in other venues around the world.

Ms. Laredo was born Ruth Meckler in 1937 and studied piano with her mother, Miriam Meckler. She made her orchestral debut at 11, playing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at…

Sony, Universal Join Forces for Subscription Music Service

It's mating season for entertainment-industry giants. Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group are in talks to develop a jointly operated subscription music service for the Internet, according to a report the two companies issued in the first week of May. The news followed by only a week an announcement of a possible merger between record clubs Columbia House and BMG Music Club.

Sony Music Entertainment is a unit of Sony Corp. of Japan; Universal Music Group is a unit of Seagram, Ltd. of Montreal. The two music companies are members of the "Big Five" conglomerates who control…

Shrinking Music Industry

A drop-off in business these days seems to produce one inevitable consequence: a cutback in jobs.

On Wednesday, October 15, Universal Music Group (UMG) officially joined the downsizing trend with an announcement that it had cut 550 employees from its ranks this year, 200 of them in the US. Approximately 800 more will receive pink slips within the first quarter of 2004, according to reports in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.

The news is especially sobering. UMG is the world's largest music label and the only company among the music industry's "Big Five"…

Internet Radio Listening Doubles

A study released earlier this month by The Arbitron Company and Edison Media Research shows that Internet radio broadcasting continues to be a fast-growing medium. The survey of Arbitron diarykeepers also brings to light both the challenges and opportunities that the Internet presents to radio broadcasters, particularly in the much-talked-about arena of e-commerce.

An update to the Internet radio listening study that Arbitron and Edison first conducted back in July 1998, this latest edition of the Internet Listening Study examines how radio listeners use the medium, who is listening online…

New Meridian 800 Combo Player Pushes Performance Envelope

Is there a computer in your audio future? Meridian thinks so. An expensive new flagship disc player hints at things to come at more affordable prices. Working at the far edge of the digital playback frontier, the UK company has just announced its 800 Reference, a new combination CD/DVD player, built like a computer, that takes digital audio and video playback to a new level. The player "sets the bar for DVD and CD reproduction," according to a June 16 press release.

Guided by AES Fellow Bob Stuart, chairman of the Acoustic Renaissance for Audio, Meridian has consistently worked toward…

Svetlana vs. Svetlana

What's in a name?

In trademark disputes, enough to justify protracted and expensive litigation, as in the case of New Sensor Corporation v. CE Distributing, LLC, heard recently in US District Court in New York. At issue: the use of the name "Svetlana" on vacuum tubes distributed by both companies, but sourced from different factories.

In certain audiophile circles, Svetlana tubes have almost mythical status. Until four years ago, there was no doubt about their authenticity because the brandname applied only to tubes made in the Svetlana plant in St. Petersburg, operated by a Russian…

Added to the Archives This Week

John Atkinson heads across America's great plains toward Kansas to engineer a brand-new recording that he and Les Berkley document in A Mosaic of Music: Stereophile's Clarinet Quintet CD. For the new CD, JA returns again to Chad Kassem's audio Mecca, noting that "105 takes of the Mozart and 102 takes of the Brahms later, we had gotten everything down on tape in two days of intense music-making."

The Theta Citadel monoblock amplifier "is as handsome a monoblock as these jaded eyes have laid eyes on," says Jonathan Scull. But, he adds, "As we all know, it's the sound that counts." Not to be…

Media Servers to Increase Market

Flat-screen TVs were clearly the winners at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but bubbling under the surface at the trade show were signs that creating home networks using media servers to manage both audio and video content libraries will also soon hit the big time.

Confirming this hunch, market research and consulting firm Parks Associates (PA) predicts that "multimedia hubs" will reach mass-market status by the end of 2008, with more than 40 million units shipping to US households. The new, 90-page report, "Multimedia Networks in the Home: Analysis and Forecasts," includes…

Added to the Archives This Week

From the August issue, Robert Deutsch gives the Audio Research VS110 power amplifier and SP16L line preamplifier the full treatment. RD reveals how he finds products to review, and more importantly, what he found appealing in the ARC amp and preamp.

Is Art Dudley out to annoy Stereophile readers? He points out in Listening #8 that sometimes he just can't help himself. So what will it be this time: politics, format wars, or silly tweaks? No, Dudley decides to really get 'em going and review another Musical Fidelity product, the A3.2 integrated amplifier.

HE 2003 has come and gone,…