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…
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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.
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…
Last year wasn't kind to UK entertainment conglomerate EMI Group PLC. On February 5, the company issued its second profit warning since September, blaming a slow market for recorded music. EMI is now predicting that pretax profits for the year ending March 31 will total $213.4 million (245.1 million euros, or £150 million), far below analysts' predictions. The news caused an immediate 6.4% drop in the price of EMI shares on the London market.
"Despite strong performances in the UK and much of continental Europe, the second-half outlook for turnover in recorded music is impacted by the…
Editor's Note: Stephen Mejias has never attended CES before, and does not claim to be an audiophile. But he's distinquished himself enough around the Stereophile office that it seemed a good idea to register his first-time impressions of audio's greatest show on earth.
Latarria Hardy, our online accounts executive, taps me on the shoulder. "Are those mountains?" she asks. I lift the visor that's covering the window at seat 19A and look out, letting in a blast of sunlight from off of the plane's silver wing. "Too much light," I say. "I can't tell."
Locking in our trays,…
You want controversy? We got major controversy right here. In 1991, the Tice R-4 TPT and Coherence ElectroTec EP-C "Clocks" were released and then the fun started. Read everything Stereophile writers and readers had to say about these contentious products, as well as comments from the manufacturer.
Back in 1987, J. Gordon Holt got his hands on the $8000 Versa Dynamics 2.0 LP player, remarking, "That's more money than a lot of audiophiles have invested in records through the years. Total overkill! Or so it might seem."
Stereophile's erstwhile philosopher-in-residence George Reisch…
IPOs are jumping and the Nasdaq is up—some mid-summer economic indicators point toward a recovery, but you wouldn't know it from retail reports. Circuit City, Good Guys, and Harvey Electronics are singing the blues, while discounter Costco is whistling all the way to the bank.
In early July, San Francisco–based Good Guys reported an $8.4 million loss for its first fiscal quarter, ended May 31. The loss was almost twice the $4.6 million net loss reported for the same period last year. Good Guys' first quarter sales slid 14% to $143.4 million, a $171 million decline from the first quarter…
Last week Microsoft entered the Internet audio fray by announcing the release of their Windows Media Technologies 4 platform, which the company claims introduces a "new standard for CD-quality audio" on the Internet. Windows Media includes Windows Media Player, Windows Media Services, Windows Media Tools, and Windows Media Audio SDK.
Microsoft says that Windows Media Audio (WMA) files run at half the size of competing formats such as MP3, while maintaining "CD-quality sound"—a term largely criticized by audiophiles as misleading, since many feel the highly compressed files are not nearly…