News

The hits just keep on coming in fair-use land. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has proposed legislation that requires that all digital radio content be encrypted, including works that now exist in the public domain. The proposed legislation would apply to satellite radio (Sirius, XM) as well as conventional terrestrial broadcasting. As proposed by the RIAA, content could be recorded only in blocks of 30 minutes or longer, and the recorded data could not be exported from the recording device (in other words, you could only play it back on the device you had recorded it on—no more recording programs on your hi-fi to listen to on your way to work). To learn more about this legislation, go to Public">http://www.publicknowledge.org/news/analysis/digital-radio-2pager">Publ… Knowledge's two-page summary. While you're there, you might want to check out "Why">http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/why">"Why These Issues Matter."

I'm currently attending GuangZhou Hi-Fi 2006 in GuangZhou, China (you can read my China">http://blog.stereophile.com/china2006//index.html">China Hi-Fi Tour 2006 blog). The show is a fantastic audio event and everywhere I look, I see products I want—some very similar to mainstream US brands and some exceedingly strange and different. But the audiophiles are familiar: Show me a guy who lights up in the glow of a 300B and I'll show you one of my chosen people.

The pendulum has swung back to the West Coast. Just one week after the Capital AudioFest, three weeks after AXPONA NYC, and six weeks after T.H.E. Show Newport Beach, the second California Audio Show is set to begin. Scheduled for July 15–17 in the Crowne Plaza SFO in Burlingame, the show is located just minutes from San Francisco Airport, a few giant steps from a major freeway, a free shuttle ride away from the airport's BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) stop, and an eight-minute walk from CalTrain's Broadway Station.

Show organizer Constantine Soo, founder and editor of Dagogo.com, reports that the show currently promises 42 rooms of various sizes, all with active exhibits playing music. The list of exhibitors and brands, complete with a generous helping of California retailers, service providers, and distributors, includes a host of companies whose equipment resides in the homes and dreams of Stereophile readers.

Featuring Mytek's MQA-equipped Manhattan II D/A preamplifier-headphone amplifier on its cover, our new issue—132 pages of awesome—is jam-packed with good stuff. There are reviews of Ayre's QX-5 Twenty "digital hub," Kii's ground-breaking, DSP-optimized active speaker, amplifiers from Bel Canto and Octave, and preamplifiers from Shindo and Sutherland. Jim Austin interviews Pass Labs' onlie begetter, veteran engineer Nelson Pass. Robert Baird surveys audiophile-quality reissues of horror-film soundtracks. Mikey Fremer visits revitalized SME in the UK. And kicking it all off, Art Dudley condemns CD player manufacturers who neglect their customers in the long term.

The official launch of XM">www.xmradio.com">XM Satellite Radio was set for September 12. But within hours of the September 11 attack on New York and the Pentagon, XM announced that it would be postponing its debut, which was slated to take place in Washington DC at its headquarters and broadcast studio complex.

Loudspeaker designer and manufacturer Richard Vandersteen has heard enough: He is embarking on a crusade to right an egregious wrong he sees being perpetuated by the marketing scribes and salesfolk working in the consumer electronics business. Though he was miles away, at his company headquarters in Hanford, CA, his passion for spreading the audiophile word came through the telephone loud and clear.

On Tuesday, March 29, 2005, the US Supreme Court heard the oral arguments for the case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. This was widely covered in the mainstream news media, as well as all over the Web, but none of the synopses of the case did true justice to the give-and-take of the arguments, as I discovered this week when I stumbled upon a .pdf transcription of the complete oral arguments.