Pioneer's competitors Matsushita (Panasonic) and Japan Victor…
search
Despite the recent defeat of DVD-Audio's copy-protection scheme (see previous story), Pioneer Electronics has decided to move forward with its plan to release two models of its high-resolution players in Japan. The announcement was made December 14 by company executives in Tokyo, who said that delaying the format's launch at this late stage could do irreparable damage to its acceptance by music fans. Super Audio Compact Disc, a competing format developed by the Sony/Philips alliance, is already beginning to win converts.
After my first full day of weaving my way around the Consumer Electronics Show, I'm happy to be back in my hotel room, ready to open the laptop and type. I've got a tote bag (everyone has a tote bag) gorged fat with press releases, CDs, magazines, directories, scribbled notes, a fortune cookie. . .. What's going on here? Am I really the newest writer for Stereophile? And what's the deal with this fortune cookie?
The day starts simply enough: 8am breakfast in the hotel lobby with Wes Phillips and Jon Iverson. As we venture into our yogurt and corn flakes, some familiar faces drop by.…
The year was 1956, and Elvis had just finshed his set on the December 15 Louisiana Hayride radio show. Elvis was one of a half-dozen acts that were broadcast that night on KWKH, the radio station that originated Hayride. After his encore, Elvis left the stage and the crowd went wild—so wild that they would not stop screaming for more of the soon-to-be king of rock'n'roll. Because several acts on the bill had not yet performed, the show's announcer, Horace Logan, went to the microphone in an attempt to quiet the audience, and ended up making a little music history.
"Elvis has left the…
This may come as no surprise to Stereophile's website audience, but a report released last week finds that the heaviest users of the World Wide Web are also avid consumers of traditional media, listening to CDs and radio and watching television as they point their browsers to e-commerce, informational, and recreational sites.
According to the latest Pathfinder Study just released by Arbitron NewMedia, the amount of time heavy Web users spend with TV, radio, audio tapes/CDs, newspapers, and magazines exceeds that of light Web users. With the exception of TV, the report finds that…
Kalman Rubinson admits to having plenty of Sony trinkets, including clocks, VCRs, and TVs. But until the Sony SCD-XA777ES multichannel SACD/CD player, he's always preferred other brands when it came to audio. Rubinson reveals whether this latest expression of SACD engineering from Sony has changed his perception of the company as a serious audiophile contender.
Opening his review of the Revel Performa M20 loudspeaker, John Atkinson writes, "Loudspeaker lore has it that a 'good big'un will always beat a good small'un.' But my experience has been that the traditional wisdom is often wrong…
The campaign by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to litigate music downloading out of existence has drawn the attention of legislators in the nation's capital.
On July 31, Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), chairman of the senate's subcommittee on investigations, began an inquiry into the trade group's mass launch of subpoenas against ordinary citizens, accusing them of piracy or complicity in the violation of copyrights. Under provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), violators could be fined anywhere from $750 to $150,000 per individual song downloaded from…
Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), must feel like Sisyphus playing an endless game of "Whack-A-Mole." Her job recently has been to patrol the digital world for music copyright violators, especially those pesky pirate MP3 websites on the Internet. It seems that each time they find and eradicate a horde of copyright violators, hundreds more pop up faster than you can say "information wants to be free."
For folks like Rosen, it's bad enough that we have legions of college students zipping copies of untethered MP3 music files around the…
In his review of the Sharp SM-SX100 digital integrated amplifier, Michael Fremer asks: "why would a sharp mind offer a $15,000 integrated digital amplifier to a reviewer who has been characterized in the audio press as the 'self-proclaimed Analog Messiah' and a 'hyper-Luddite'?" Would Fremer actually cotton to a digitized vinyl recording? Read Fremer's report for the startling conclusion.
CDs retailing for $6.99? For years now, Naxos has built its reputation on bringing high-quality—yet bargain-priced—music to audiophiles. In his interview, "Amazing Stuff: Klaus Heymann of Naxos," Sam…
Sometimes a product can take a while to reach its potential. As Jonathan Scull writes, "First, the Accuphase DP-75V CD player took a full two weeks to warm up and pull its act together. If anything, it was too polite, warm, and over-the-top bloomy when I first lit it up. The '75 requires a long warm-up period. But wait . . . just wait for it." When the wait was over, J-10 filed his observations in detail.
John Atkinson found the Mirage MRM-1 loudspeaker simply "drop-dead gorgeous." But it takes more than a loudspeaker's looks to satisfy JA, who reveals all in this review from the…
Two scuttled mergers in the past year haven't damaged the profit picture for EMI Group PLC. Neither has a global slowdown in music sales. EMI announced May 22 that it expects to see a 5.7% increase in pretax profits for its fiscal year ended March 31: £259.5 million (US $374 million), up from £245.4 million (US $353 million) a year earlier. EMI's sales for the year rose 12% to £2.67 billion (US $3.84 billion).
It's not coincidental that the company's North American market share has grown from 9% last year to 10.8% at present. EMI's share of the world market now stands at 14.1%, up from…