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The hits just keep on coming in fair-use land. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has proposed legislation that requires that all digital radio content be encrypted, including works that now exist in the public domain. The proposed legislation would apply to satellite radio (Sirius, XM) as well as conventional terrestrial broadcasting. As proposed by the RIAA, content could be recorded only in blocks of 30 minutes or longer, and the recorded data could not be exported from the recording device (in other words, you could only play it back on the device you had recorded it on…
Will surround sound rejuvenate the music industry? That's the position many record label execs took when adding the capability to DVD-Audio and SACD years ago. But while they wait for the high-rez formats to catch on, SRS Labs has decided to add multichannel audio to the conventional compact disc.
SRS recently announced that Lava Records' artist Uncle Kracker has chosen the company's Circle Surround (CS) multichannel encoding technology for a disc that will be released this week called Seventy Two & Sunny. According to SRS, CS provides the capability to encode up to 6.1 channels of…
Last week, American Technology Corp. (ATC) announced that three additional patents on its loudspeaker technologies have been granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (see previous story). The company also announced that it has acquired the rights to "strategic" patents from the former Carver Corp. covering a variety of audio reproduction and amplifier technologies.
The company says that its intellectual property portfolio now includes over 100 US and foreign patents and patent filings relating to its HyperSonic Sound Technology (HSS), Stratified Field Technology (SFT), PureBass,…
The Elf Foundation's accomplishments are extraordinary. In just four and a half years, the nonprofit organization has facilitated the design and construction of more than 40 Rooms of Magic. These are private entertainment theaters in medical facilities for children: hospitals, as well as centers for autism, abused children, and kids with long-term disabilities. And none of the design work or state-of-the-art equipment for these children's oases costs the host facilities a cent.
Elf is the brainchild of Doug Weinstein, 49, and his partner, Carol Campbell. After one of Weinstein's young…
Build a road and traffic will flow.
Lucent Technologies recently announced that it has developed a technique to transmit 400 Gigabits of data per second over one fiberoptic strand. Lucent's technology, called dense wavelength division multiplexing, divides a strand into multiple channels of light. Some fibers may be split into as many as 80 channels, according to Gerald Butlers, president of Lucent's optical networking division. With eight fibers, data can be transmitted at 3.2 trillion bits per second. The Wall Street Journal described this as "the equivalent of 90,000 encyclopedia…
I am saddened to report that Peter James Walker, the founder of quintessential English audio company Quad, passed away on December 10, after a long illness. He was 87. Peter Walker had been married twice; both his wives had died before him. He is survived by a daughter, Victoria, and a son, Ross, the latter having played a major role in managing Quad through the 1970s and '80s.
Peter had started his Acoustical Manufacturing Company (as S.P. Fidelity Sound System) in London before WWII to make public address equipment. After his premises were destroyed by bombing, he relocated to Huntingdon…
Renowned Canadian pianist Robert Silverman will be signing copies of his
Stereophile CDs at noon on Saturday May 22 at Home Entertainment
2004. Recorded in audiophile sound quality by Stereophile editor
John Atkinson, Robert's recordings include Concert,
live performances of works by Bach, Chopin, Schumann, and Schubert; Sonata,
featuring Frans Liszt's heroic B-minor Sonata; and the complete Beethoven
Sonatas.
HE 2004 is taking place this weekend at the Manhattan Hilton, on the corner of 54th Street and 6th Avenue in New York. Robert will be available at the Stereophile both on the second…
I never "got" the spurs with which Jimmie Lee Robinson provided a percussive accompaniment to his singing and guitar playing, but I became a fan of Jimmie Lee's when I saw him perform on two successive nights at Acoustic Sounds' first blues festival in Salina, Kansas in September 1998. His subsequent live appearances at Consumer Electronics Shows and at HI-FI '99, Home Entertainment 2001, and HE2002 on behalf of Acoustic Sounds' associated APO label, were highlights of those events. (I took the accompanying photo at Jimmie Lee's May 31 HE2002 gig in New York with harmonica player Wild…
Attention, high-end audio manufacturers ready to crack the exporting nut: The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has just released its "General Guide for the Export of Consumer Electronics," providing a step-by-step process which the CEA says manufacturers can use to navigate the often uncharted and challenging regulatory waters of the export market. According to the CEA, the guide focuses on assisting manufacturers in exporting their products to the South American and Pacific Rim countries of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The…
Collectors will go to to any lengths to track down the objects of their obsession. Record collectors, a particularly extreme species, are known for their incredible attention to detail and their astounding capacity for absorbing vast quantities of minutiae.
The Internet seems made for such data-intensive types. We have recently uncovered a source for record collectors that overshadows any previous effort in terms of its breadth and depth. Now we know how at least one Finnish vinyl fanatic whiles away those long winter nights: compiling Record Collecting Resources. It's a veritable…