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Echo: Music Retailers Go Online

Echo.

It sounds like a codeword for a secret military maneuver, but it's really a coalition of heavyweight retailers who have teamed up to offer music online. Best Buy, Tower Records, Virgin Entertainment Group, Wherehouse Music, Hastings Entertainment Inc. and Trans World Entertainment Corp. (owner of the FYE, Strawberries, and Coconuts record stores) have formed a partnership to deliver "non-physical product" to consumers via the Internet.

Still in the planning stage, the online move comes as a concession to the Internet's inevitability as a major source of entertainment, and as…

Madrigal web site to offer <i>La Folia</i>, a music webzine

Coming soon on the Madrigal Audio Laboratories website is La Folia, a music webzine. Edited by Mike Silverton, La Folia sets out to supplement the audiophile press by directing its emphasis at recordings elsewhere neglected: present-day art music (aka "classical"), free and improvisational jazz, category-defying hybrids, and whatever else strikes their "clutch of sweet-spot stuckees as rare and well done."

"Look, too," Mike tells us, "for talk about core repertoire, good-sounding bargains, aspects of pop, and whatever else inspires comment. And perhaps most important, discussion of…

Music Sales Continue Slide

Sales of recorded music declined by 9.2% on a monetary basis and 11% on a unit basis worldwide during the first half of 2002, according to recently released figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The drop is a continuation of a long slump that began in the mid-1990s, blamed by many music industry executives on the widespread use of CD burners and the popularity of downloading tunes on the Internet. Others acknowledge that increasing competition for consumers' time and money—especially films on DVD—is eating into music industry profits.

The London-…

Cutbacks at Boston Acoustics; Results Up Elsewhere

It's a season of mixed results in the electronics industry. On April 9, Peabody, MA–based Boston Acoustics announced that it has slashed jobs due to a slow fourth quarter, reducing its workforce from 389 to 327 as a result of slowing sales. The loudspeaker manufacturer expects earnings of more than $4.2 million for the year ending March 31, a figure that puts the company in a profitable position despite a loss of close to $1 million for the final quarter.

With a fiscal year that also closed March 31, Kenwood Electronics' US division showed both sales growth and profit, despite an overall…

New AV Marketplace

This month, Stereophile brings you the Internet's largest community of qualified audio and video buyers and sellers, powered by industry leader Audiogon. Visitors to Stereophile.com will find a new "AV Marketplace" link that connects directly to the most robust venue for buying and selling used and new audio and video equipment on the Web. Services also include an online Bluebook for quick evaluation of used equipment prices, online used equipment forums, member product reviews, information on manufacturers, and a member feedback system.

Unlike eBay, the Stereophile Marketplace only lists…

dbx Founder David Blackmer Dies

We were saddened to learn of the death of inventor and audio engineer David Blackmer. The founder of dbx and Earthworks Audio Products, Inc. died at his home in Wilton, NH on March 21. He was 75.

Blackmer's development of dbx expansion-compression technology in the early 1970s pushed the performance level of recording and playback systems beyond their previously accepted limits. Like his better-known colleague Ray Dolby, Blackmer found a unique way to work around the dynamic restrictions of analog tape. "His original RMS detector circuit, which was the foundation for dbx, was most…

The Ever-Mutating CD

Although the CD was successfully released into the music industry gene pool 20 years ago, several companies are still tinkering with its DNA in order to assist record labels in restricting how consumers use their discs.

SunnComm has been working in the lab for the past few years to develop a way to prevent consumers from copying CDs while still retaining replay compatibility with most CD and DVD players. After several fits and starts, the company is reporting that its latest mutation, MediaMax CD-3, may be able to do the trick. Earlier this summer, SunnComm and BMG entered into an…

Autosound Frontier: DVD-A

Perhaps even more than the typical living room, the automobile might be considered multichannel audio's natural environment.

DVD-Audio may be the natural carrier for mobile surround sound. The high-resolution format got a big boost in Detroit last week at the Digital Car Conference and Exhibition. Panasonic Automotive Electronics Company won plenty of industry praise with its DVD-A demonstration format at the trade show. "For the first time it sounds like what we're doing in the studio," said Elliot Scheiner, a recording engineer who has been collaborating with Panasonic on the design of…

DVD-Audio Rises Again?

DVD-Audio has kept a low profile since its misfired "launch" late last year (see previous story), but has popped up again at this week's Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES) in Paris. Pioneer is demonstrating its latest generation of universal DVD players, recently released in Japan, using a new DVD-Audio disc, some of the contents of which were encoded using Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP) technology to enable high-resolution surround sound.

Joining Pioneer at the convention is mastering software company Sonic Solutions, which is showing the results of its collaboration with Pioneer…

Microsoft HD Audio

As we discovered earlier this year, Microsoft is trying to make friends with audiophiles. Need more proof? The software behemoth recently announced broad support for what it has termed the "Universal Audio Architecture" (UAA) initiative, which, the company claims, "will help to ensure an improved audio experience and improved audio device driver support for users of Windows."

At the same time, Microsoft also announced the availability of the first version of its "High Definition Audio Class Driver," based on the High Definition Audio specification developed by Intel (see previous). Through…