Nagra's press release on Quick's appointment said that the company's decision to market its product line through its established US subsidiary "is part of a global move by Nagra to get closer to its customers. ... The company believes that…
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Nagra USA: The Kudelski Group has announced that Nagra USA, Inc. has appointed John R. Quick of Tempo Sales & Marketing its national sales manager for the United States. Quick was formerly national sales manager for Aerial Acoustics and has experience in high-end A/V sales, system engineering, project management, and control systems integration.
NAD has announced what they claim is the world's first true digital audio power amplifier directly linking a CD player to a loudspeaker. As explained by Peter Lyngdorf, chairman of NAD Electronics and TACT Audio, the Millennium "is not a conventional combination of D/A converter and analog amplification.
"The TACT Millennium employs a PWM (pulse-width modulation) amplification stage to amplify a digital signal and couple it directly to the loudspeaker without converting it to the analog domain." Among the claimed benefits of the design are high efficiency---close to 90%---and "constant…
Back in September of 1986, the KEF R107 loudspeaker represented the flagship of KEF's much admired Reference Series. Dick Olsher and a variety of other Stereophile scribes profile this important audio achievement over the course of five years, wrapping up with Tom Norton's 1995 review of the R107/2 "Raymond Cooke Signature Edition."
"Energy had their own room at the January '93 WCES," writes Thomas J. Norton in his review of the Energy Veritas v2.8 loudspeaker. "Veritas, of course, means truth. And 'truth' seemed an apt description, based on my brief exposure. I left the room muttering…
FM stereo, introduced in 1961, was the last great leap ahead in commercial radio. That was 38 years ago, an eternity in technological time. Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) techniques are capable of overcoming many of the limitations of analog broadcasting, including multipath distortion. Such systems are already in place in Europe and Canada, so why not in the United States?
Blame it on the reluctance of American broadcasters to relinquish their present spots on the radio dial, and on the glacial pace of the Federal Communications Commission. As of November 1, the agency has finally…
The fate of Tower Records has been the subject of music industry speculation for months. The company's financial difficulties have been no secret; several stories recently appeared alluding to a new Tower policy of making some suppliers share the burden—especially distributors of small specialty classical labels.
The Sacramento, CA–based music retailer has also been rumored to be a candidate for bankruptcy, a possibility that could sink the small labels who depend on Tower's "deep catalog" operation.
Tower owners Louise and Russ Solomon have put such rumors to rest, at least…
The advent of ubiquitous online digital audio file availability, not to mention a growing number of ways to effectively use a computer to organize and store a media library, has prompted futurists to begin declaring this the eve of the "digital den" era.
While we must recognize that few high-end audio companies will take part in or drive the initial phases of this predicted transition to a hard-drive–centric media life, there have been exceptions: notably products from Linn, Sutherland, and others.
But what of the major consumer electronics brands that we've come to know and love (…
"Is there anything genuinely new under the audio sun?" asks Michael Fremer as he describes the technology behind the T+A V10 integrated amplifier. "For the most part, industry cynics say 'No,'" MF remarks, "claiming that most new amplifier designs merely rehash well-worn circuits. [But] T+A developed a new circuit for the V10 that it calls the SPPP, for 'Single Primary Push-Pull.'"
Kalman Rubinson settles in with the Nagra DAC D/A processor, asking, "Why would anyone think about spending $10,000 or more for a DAC to play standard "Red Book" 16-bit/44.1kHz CDs?" Perhaps, suggests KR, there's…
The music industry's traditional packaged-goods retail business may be continuing its long decline, but the sale of downloadable tunes is hot and getting hotter.
On December 16, Apple Computer announced that it has sold more than 25 million songs through its iTunes Music Store since its inception four months ago. The Cupertino, CA–based technology pioneer is now selling about 222,000 individual songs per day, at 99¢ each, a volume more than three times the 70,000 per day the company was selling in September, when the iTunes service was available only to Apple users. In October, the service…
On March 24, Universal Classics labels Decca and Deutsche Grammophon announced a pioneering global initiative to release live recordings of recent performances by the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics for download on iTunes. By the end of the year, four major European orchestras are expected to follow suit, releasing live concerts on the web on the DG Concerts or Decca Concerts virtual labels.
Other digital service providers such as Real's Rhapsody and Napster are expected to follow iTunes' lead in the coming weeks. While all of the files are currently compressed, Universal Classics is…
The nascent satellite radio industry has entered a critical phase, with both XM Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio posting losses for the fourth quarter. Combined, the two companies have yet to sign up a half-million subscribers.
Sirius is in the worse shape of the two, suffering heavy startup costs and sluggish subscription activity. For the fourth quarter, the company posted a net loss of $122.1 million, compared with a loss of $72.7 million for the same period a year earlier. Revenue for 2002 totaled $685,000.
Sirius went live in July, and ended the year with fewer than 30,000…