The Silverdale by the Bay Resort Hotel in Silverdale, WA, will be the site of the second annual Vacuum State of the Art Conference, scheduled for August 21-24. The conference will feature new and vintage equipment, tube electronics seminars, a used-gear swap meet, and demonstrations of audio creations by both amateur and professional designers.
Frequently a hot topic in the hallowed pages of <I>Stereophile</I>, DVD-Audio will be among the agenda items at the third US DVD Conference on October 1-2, 1998, in San Francisco. Presented by the <A HREF="http://www.dvdforum.org/">DVD Forum</A>, the international association working to develop universal DVD formats, the event will take place at the Grand Peninsula Ballroom at the Hyatt Regency SF Airport.
The Three Tenors may have reached a global audience of 2 billion people during their performance prior to the final game of the World Cup, but they had only 80,000 fans on hand in Paris's Champs de Mars park, acording to estimates by Paris police. That number was only 10% of the anticipated 800,000, most of whom stayed away because of unseasonably cold and windy weather.
E-mail spam just got a lot noisier thanks to AT&T's <A HREF="http://www.a2bmusic.com">a2b music</A> and <A HREF="http://www.bmg.com/">BMG Entertainment</A>. (See previous stories <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10198/">1</A>, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10133/">2</A>.) Last week, they announced that BMG will deliver the first "mass communication" of a2b MAIL to the consumer databases of each of its websites, <A HREF="http://www.bugjuice.com">www.bugjuice.com</A> (alternative and rock music), <A HREF="http://www.peeps.com">www.peeps.com</A> (urban music), and <A HREF="http://www.twangthis.com">www.twangthis.com</A> (country music).
On June 23, <A HREF="http://www.burr-brown.com/">Burr-Brown Corp.</A> announced the PCM1728 digital-to-analog converter (DAC), designed for consumer and professional audio applications.
Last week, <A HREF="http://www.xingtech.com">Xing Technology Corporation</A> announced its sponsorship of the <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/conference/">First Annual MP3 Summit</A>. In a statement, the company urged music-industry executives to discuss copyright issues, technical standards, and music distribution, and to participate in developing the future of MP3.
On June 17, <A HREF="http://www.carltonplc.co.uk/">Carlton Communications</A>, owner of Technicolor, announced that it has entered into a merger agreement to acquire <A HREF="http://www.nimbuscd.com/">Nimbus CD International</A>, one of the world's largest independent manufacturers of optical discs, including CD-Audio, DVD, DVD-ROM, and CD-ROM.
Hundreds of manufacturers will be demonstrating state-of-the-art audio products at <A HREF="http://www.hifishow.com">HI-FI '98</A>---some of which have never before been seen by the public. Here is the last installment of announcements:
James Dunning, Jr., Chairman and CEO of <A HREF="http://www.petersenco.com">The Petersen Companies, Inc.</A>, announced June 4th the completion of the acquisition of <I>Stereophile</I> and <I>Stereophile Guide to Home Theater</I> (two of this country's leading high-end audio and home theater publications), as well as HI-FI '98, The Home Theater & Specialty Audio Show.
Hundreds of manufacturers will be demonstrating state-of-the-art audio products at <A HREF="http://www.hifishow.com">HI-FI '98</A>---some of which have never before been seen by the public. We're running several announcements each week leading up to the Show to give you a taste of what to expect. Here's the fourth assortment: