Late August news bites: Texas Instruments announced August 25 the completion of its acquisition of chipmaker Burr-Brown Corporation in a stock swap. Burr-Brown is highly regarded in the audio industry for its low-noise, high-speed digital/analog converters and digital signal-processing (DSP) ICs. The company also makes ultra-high-quality analog components, a segment of the semiconductor industry expected to grow by 25% in the coming year, according to industry analyst Dataquest.
Chicago's Maxwell Street district is considered by many to be the birthplace of Chicago blues. But the old neighborhood is in danger of permanently losing some of its historic buildings, thanks to expansion plans by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The potential loss of the neighborhood has sparked protests by a coalition of blues musicians, including a hunger strike by 69-year-old APO Records artist Jimmie Lee Robinson.
Audiophiles aren't taking to the streets just yet, but John Atkinson is more than a little riled about the proposed watermarking of SACD and DVD-Audio recordings. In this month's "As We See It," "Watermarking: the Devil's Work!," JA exhorts the audiophile masses to rise up in protest.
When a manufacturer makes extraordinary claims about a product, the result is sometimes an extraordinary review. That's what happened when Jonathan Scull examined the Richard Gray's Power Company 400S AC line conditioner last June. His report raised a chorus of reader and industry reactions, all of them included here along with some additional unpublished observations.
The word's largest Internet service provider has decided to forgo an MP3 search feature until it figures out how to distinguish legal recordings from illegal ones. America Online made the announcement August 11 after discovering that the feature, which it hoped would enhance its Winamp site, might encourage piracy of copyrighted recordings.
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.
The good news keeps coming. According to the lastest figures from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the month of May echoed previous months' continuous increase in audio product sales, with monthly revenues up 11% and year-to-date revenues up 12%, to $3.1 billion.
Tempted to just cut'n'paste his earlier Arcam integrated amplifier review into his rundown of the Arcam FMJ CD23 CD player, Lonnie Brownell explains that, "after all, it's the same story: British manufacturer gives highly praised product a slick new case to entice those who find their Alpha line too downscale in appearance, adds a few internal tweaks to make it a bit more interesting, and kicks the price up by $400." Instead, he does the right thing in a complete review that even answers the vital question: Should this Arcam be your last CD player?
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.