News

Last month, we reportedhttp://stereophile.com/news/012405roundup/">reported; that audio engineers with a yen for magnetic tape were hoarding their remaining stockpiles in the wake of the Chapter 11 restructuring–inspired shutdown of the Quantegyhttp://www.quantegy.com">Quantegy; plant in Opelika, Alabama. What a difference a month makes! Two new sources have come to the rescue.

Magnolia Audio, the upscale west-coast subsidiary of Best Buy, has signed an agreement with ReadyTo Play, a Palo Alto, CA–based digital music company, to offer in-store and point-of-sale promotion of RTP's CD ripping service to Magnolia's customers.

Universal Classics, owners of the great Deutsche Grammophon, London/Decca, and Philips catalogues, has made its entire treasure trove of Mahler recordings available for free, full-track, online streaming. Whether you are a babe in the Vienna woods or a seasoned Mahlerite, this is a rare opportunity to audition and compare a good 180 Mahler symphony recordings, including over 60 out-of-print Mahler titles.

The tracks, first posted to Mahler150.com last year in honor of the 150th anniversary of Gustav Mahler's birth, remain available in 2011, the 100th anniversary of Mahler's death. While you can no longer vote on the contents of DG's 13-CD box set, Mahler: The People's Choice—it has already been issued—you can still compile playlists of favorite movements and complete symphonies, and create your near-ideal mix-and-match performance of all Mahler symphonies and song cycles.

Product debuts galore were only one of the reasons that March 3's Music Matters 11, the latest installment of Definitive Audio Seattle's annual four-hour evening marathon, was a model event of its kind. Another, articulated by Definitive's president Craig Abplanalp to exhibitors less than an hour before the doors opened at 5pm, was that, at this Definitive Audio 40th Anniversary celebration, music rather than long-winded product spiels was the focus of each 20-minute listening session.

Certainly audiophiles heard the call. Music Matters 11 drew over 500 people...

Citing increasing competition from stronger companies and online music ventures about to debut from major record labels, an investment group has taken the drastic step of calling for the sale of Liquid">http://www.liquidaudio.com">Liquid Audio.

As we enter the week of The Home Entertainment Show (HE2005), you can almost hear the audio industry holding its breath, waiting for the Show's April 28 opening date to announce new products, alliances, and strategies. However, despite the lack of hard news coming across the www.stereophile.com newsdesk this week, we have been receiving almost daily hints concerning the must-hear products and rooms awaiting us at the Hilton New York Hotel.

Because they now realize that downloading music from the Internet is here to stay, it would seem the major record companies would love to see a world in which Web consumers no longer own a copy of a song or album, but simply pay each time they listen to it.