Harman's Andrew Clark reports that the manufacturing and management functions carried out at the Madrigal facility in Middletown (which predates…
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Harman International announced July 1 that it will close its Madrigal facility in Middletown, CT on August 30 as it continues to consolidate and reorganize its high-end brands under the Harman Specialty Group banner. Although the name Madrigal was itself not used as a brand on audio products, it had been the umbrella under which Harman had produced and distributed its Mark Levinson, Revel, Audio Access, and (recently discontinued) Proceed brands.
Both SACD and DVD-Audio have been slow finding their way into higher-end players. Sony dominates the market for SACD, and the other major consumer electronics manufacturers are trickling out DVD-A and universal players. The few exceptions include SACD machines from Classé and Accuphase. Soon to be added to the list: Linn.
Last week saw Sony, Linn, and ESS Technology, a creator of chip technology for digital video, digital home systems, and home networking, announcing a cooperative effort to support the SACD format in DVD players by incorporating ESS's Vibratto DVD single-chip products…
The economy may be slowing down in some parts of the country, but not, apparently, in Minneapolis, where national electronics retailer Best Buy Co., Inc. announced December 7 its acquisition of both Musicland Stores Corporation (also of Minneapolis) and Seattle-based Magnolia Hi-Fi, Inc. The buyouts will give Best Buy increased exposure in rural malls and in the Pacific Northwest. The company also announced a plan to open several stores in Canada over the next three years, beginning with eight locations for which leases have already been signed.
Best Buy operates more than 400 stores in…
Most aspiring musicians dream of the day they will sign a contract with a major record label. Too often, the dreams become nightmares from which they can escape only much later in life.
So stated Don Henley, Courtney Love, Patti Austin, LeAnn Rimes, and other musicians in appearances before the California Legislature's Select Committee on the Entertainment Industry during the first week of September. The artists came to Sacramento to plead for changes in California contract law which they hope will free them from a form of indentured servitude that controls not only how their creations…
As Larry Greenhill reports in his review of the Sony SCD-C555ES SACD changer, "I didn't know what to expect from multichannel SACD. Would a multichannel music-only disc give me high-energy dramatics? Would there be any room for meditative, closed-eyed, total progressive muscular relaxation?" As Greenhill says, "The best was yet to come."
After September's tragedy, John Atkinson winds his way back from depression with The Restorative Power of Music. As JA finds during an audiophile road trip in October, "I had lost sight of that restorative power in the dreadful days following September 11…
There may be hope for the most common type of hearing loss. Researchers at the University of Michigan have succeeded in growing new hair cells in the inner ears of laboratory animals, the first time that such cells have been regenerated in mammals.
Hair cells are microscopic reed-like structures within the cochlea of the inner ear. They translate hydraulic pressure waves into nerve impulses, which are carried by auditory nerves into the brain. Mammals are born with a fixed number of hair cells, which do not regrow once they have been damaged by loud noises, infections, or by some drugs…
Audiophiles know there is no better reason to travel abroad than to attend a hi fi show in a foreign city. I'm only half kidding. With dozens of shows, most open to the public and scattered across every continent, what better way to see the world?
Moscow, Dublin, London, New York, Sydney, Rotterdam, Seoul, Munich, Athens, Singapore, Bristol, Kiev, Oslo, Montreal, Denver, Milan, São Paulo, Lucerne, Gothenburg, and on and on. Has anyone hit them all in a single year?
There's a newcomer to add to the list: Three audio products distributors in Belgium got together last year and…
Ready or not, here comes the audio download future—and a sizable portion of it may be wireless (think cellphones). Or at least that's what IDC is predicting in a new study called "US Wireless Music 2005-2009 Forecast and Analysis: Grooves on The Move."
IDC's Susan Kevorkian gets right to the point: "We believe that online and wireless music services may represent the music industry's best long-term prospects for reversing decline and promoting growth, and that these new services will ultimately be the future of recorded music distribution."
Although music downloads are only one…
Sam Phillips, the Memphis recording engineer who was acclaimed by many as one of rock and roll's inventors, died of respiratory failure July 30. He was 80.
Phillips was probably best known for being the first to record Elvis Presley, who walked into his Memphis storefront recording studio at 706 Union Avenue one day in 1953, intent on recording a disc as a birthday present for his mother, Gladys.
The 10 songs Presley recorded for Phillips' independent Sun Records label, which became known as the "Sun Sessions," vaulted Presley to stardom. In a move many people have second-guessed…
After dozens of thorny issues slowed its progress (see previous report), last week the DVD Forum announced that its Steering Committee has approved Version 1.0 of the DVD-Audio Disc specifications, making it the fifth of the DVD format family after DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, and DVD-R. According to a statement, the DVD Forum says it will soon publish the DVD-Audio Format Book, which contains the detailed specification of the format, and make it available to authorized companies by "early spring of this year."
A format war also appears to be brewing between the newly minted DVD-Audio spec…