Mobile audio is the primary market for the new service, with rural listeners considered a secondary market. Automakers Ford, DaimlerChrysler, and BMW have already signed on with Sirius, and will make satellite receivers…
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A new era in radio will begin on November 30, when a rocket lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying a commercial digital radio transponder to a geosynchronous orbit over North America. The satellite, which belongs to Sirius Satellite Radio, will eventually beam as many as 100 stations providing "CD-quality" sound to listeners throughout the continent.
In what may be the precursor to a deluge of lawsuits against electronics manufacturers, computer giant Hewlett-Packard has agreed to pay fees to German music licensing organization GEMA for revenue supposedly lost to piracy. Hewlett-Packard was targeted by GEMA last May, because the Palo Alto, Calfornia-based company's CD burners dominate the German market, and was originally asked to pay 30 marks ($12.90) for each unit sold in Germany since February, 1998.
HP settled Thursday, November 23, in a Frankfurt court on a lower judgement: 3.60 marks ($1.54) for each unit sold since the 1998 date…
Wes Phillips writes, "I catch John's eye and wonder if he's pondering the same question I am: What were we thinking?" In addition to trying to push forward the limits of getting great sound onto tape, Stereophile's release of Rhapsody In Blue would offer the public a groundbreaking arrangement of George Gershwin's most popular orchestral work. In "The Rhapsody Project," Hyperion Knight and John Atkinson join Wes in chronicling their perspectives on the processes leading to this landmark recording.
Our Vote! responses this week reveal many an audiophile's favorite-looking piece of…
Will music fans willingly pay for what they've been getting free? With the shuttering of free music site Napster a strong probability, two giants of the music industry are moving forward with plans to roll out a subscriber-based online music distribution plan.
"Duet," as the service will be called, should appear next summer. The venture is the result of a "soft alliance" between Vivendi Universal SA and Sony Music Entertainment, who together control approximately half the world's market in recorded music. (French media conglomerate Vivendi is Universal Music's new parent company, after…
Xd on its way: NHT has begun shipping its Xd DEQX Calibrated DSP speaker systems to dealers, according to an announcement made January 24 by parent company the Rockford Home Group. A high-tech twist on the old satellite-and-subwoofer scheme, the Xd consists of a pair of two-way acoustic satellite speakers; an XdW bass module with two opposing 10" drivers powered by an internal PowerPhysics 500W amplifier; and an XdA outboard processor/amplifier that includes a DEQX-calibrated DSP engine and four PowerPhysics One-Cycle Sound amps.
Many months in development (1, 2, 3), the Xd was one of the…
Charlie Lourie, longtime jazz recording industry executive and co-founder of the enthusiast-oriented Mosaic Records, died December 31, 2000 from cardiac arrest, a complication of the rare viral disease scleroderma, from which he had suffered for the last three years. He was 60.
Mr. Lourie was born on April 20, 1940 in Boston, MA. An accomplished clarinetist, he graduated from The New England Conservatory and worked in the greater Boston area throughout the '60s as a clarinetist with a variety of chamber groups and symphony orchestras (including the BSO and Boston Pops), and as a multi-…
The quest for new speaker technologies has resulted in some novel approaches to the reproduction of sound, as witnessed by products announced in the last few years by NXT and 1 . . . Ltd. (See previous story.) Some of Stereophile's readers may also recall that, back in May 1996, American Technology Corp. shook things up in the audio world by announcing what the company described as its "breakthough" new technology, the much-debated HyperSonic Sound (HSS). This was followed up in February 1997, when ATC announced the introduction of its Stratified Field Technology SFT, which company…
Several weeks back, the music industry's fear of MP3 audio technology came to a head with the release of Diamond Multimedia's Rio playback device. (See previous and related stories.) The Recording Industry Association of America then announced a new plan, called the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI; see previous article), in an effort to bring the music and audio-technology industries together to solve the problem of digital music piracy.
As a response, last week Sony Corporation announced the development of new copyright-management technologies that it claims "could revolutionize the…
For "Fine Tunes" #17, Jonathan Scull presents readers with the ultimate bachelor-pad mod for speaker stands: shiny black trash bags. More important, Scull investigates why we even try these things in the first place.
"When I describe the Thiel CS7.2 to friends, the word that gets the biggest reaction is 'simple.' Veteran audiophiles protest, nonaudiophiles just glance at the 5'-tall speaker, smile sympathetically at Bonnie, and roll their eyes." In his review of the Thiel CS7.2 loudspeaker, Brian Damkroger explains what he means by "simple," and how it applies to Thiel's seasoned approach…
Bertelsmann may escape the legal wrath of its music industry peers, thanks to a decision rendered by Germany's top court on July 25. The Federal Constitutional Court in Berlin ruled to block delivery of a $17 billion lawsuit brought by other members of the recording industry over Bertelsmann's financial support of Napster. The block is good for at least six months and could be permanently renewed upon full examination of the lawsuit. Bertelsmann has already filed in US federal court in New York to have the suit dismissed.
At issue for German jurists are the constitutionality of the…