The prognosis for survival is definitely positive as of mid-October. Shortly after announcing that it had signed "king of all media" Howard Stern to a multimillion-dollar…
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Industry observers have long debated the ultimate fate of satellite broadcaster Sirius Radio. Front-runner XM Radio, with more than two million subscribers, is already above the break-even point, but for many months Sirius struggled against technical problems and overwhelming debt. Would the fledgling survive, get devoured by its larger competitor, or worse, get picked up in a fire sale by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.?
DVD-Audio has been getting a lot of press and comments from consumers lately—as in "Where is it?" As we reported back in August, the first players from Panasonic were slated to appear last month (see previous story). But, as with all things worth waiting for, better late than never.
In an effort to clear the air about where the format is going, and in anticipation of the national launch of its DVD-Audio player line, last week Panasonic announced that it will host an educational forum on the Internet from 8 until 9pm EST, November 16, 1999. (The forum is linked here.) The company says the…
Cambridge, England's Meridian Ltd. has been making digital active (or self-powered) loudspeakers since 1990. Regarded as the best among the very few companies to offer such a product, Meridian has taken the concept to a new level by introducing three DSP-series loudspeakers with 24-bit/96kHz capability: the DSP6000, DSP5500, and DSP5000---all bearing the 96/24 suffix to distinguish them from their lower-resolution predecessors. Meridian introduced two 96kHz-capable subwoofers, the DSW1500 and DSW2500, at the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show.
The new series has powerful 80MIPS DSPs (80…
Stereophile's senior contributing editor, Michael Fremer, and the magazine's editor at large, Art Dudley, are both giving presentations this spring at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Michael appears on Tuesday, March 28, followed two weeks later, on April 11, by Art Dudley.
The goal of Cornell's "Audio Fanatics" series of occasional seminars/lectures/presentations/demonstrations is to cultivate interest among Cornell students in high-end audio/video, from vintage vinyl to the digital state of the art. These events will also be open to the larger community. More information can be found…
The record industry's favorite nonconformist, DualDisc, is getting a modest boost in February and March. Despite hand-wringing and compatibility warnings from scores of manufacturers, all of the major record labels say they plan to release some of the two-faced discs in coming weeks.
The most notable of the labels announcing a DualDisc release schedule is Sony BMG, whose Jordan Katz states, "We're thrilled to be coming to the marketplace with an innovative slate of DualDiscs, representing a broad range of artists and genres, including titles from Omarion, Jennifer Lopez, Velvet Revolver,…
The Library of Congress has honored American composer, conductor, writer, and teacher Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) with an online preview exhibit from The Leonard Bernstein Collection, one of the largest special collections in the Library's Music Division.
Bernstein, who would have been 80 on August 25, was one of the 20th century's most important musical and cultural figures. He composed scores for numerous plays, movies, and musicals---West Side Story perhaps the best-known of them all---as well as symphonies and operas. For many years he conducted at the annual Tanglewood Music…
It's well known among designers of power amplifiers that the class-A and -A/B amplifiers (referred to as linear amplifiers) used in the majority of car, home, PC, and pro audio systems are notoriously inefficient. They can consume vast amounts of power and yet waste most of it---as much as 80% or more---as heat. They require large power supplies and massive heatsinks, which drive up system weight, size, and cost. On the other hand, class-D amplifiers, using Pulse Width Modulation switching technologies, have good power efficiency but sometimes questionable audio fidelity. (The Spectron…
My buddy Jeff Wong and I were talking about the collector's mentality on one of our bike rides recently. Jeff observed that there are two major strategies for collectors who have it bad: Try to collect everything and the other is mine a tightly defined subgenre.
I tend to fall more into the "everything" category, but I lack the funds to really be comprehensive in any of my passions. Poulpe Pulps took the other direction—it specializes in pulp magazine covers featuring octopods.
How silly I thought at first, but the more I examined these covers, the cooler I thought the collection…
I'm a complete sucker for jargon. Specialized vocabulary identifies you a an insider and, whether you mean it to or not, it reveals a lot about your group.
This collection of Medical Slang is brash, irreverent, and profane. It may strike some folks as callous, but, having worked in hospitals, I know you have to develop a pretty black sense of humor to keep from being overwhelmed.
My favorite? Hard to pick, but it might be: "Dagenham - (psychiatry) or "Three Stops Beyond Barking": severely disturbed/mad (based on British train station names)"
OTOH, there's something almost…
Not as in counterculture, but as in the London Underground, Cool tour of unused and abandoned stations. Gosh I love this stuff—the only thing better is actually sneaking in yourself.