Jon Iverson

News recently coming out of Cambridge, England promises yet another new revolutionary loudspeaker technology following in the footsteps of <A HREF="http://www.nxt.co.uk/">NXT</A>'s flat-panel speakers and <A HREF="http://www.atcsd.com/">ATC</A>'s <A HREF="http://www.atcsd.com/HTML/whitepaper.html">HyperSonic Sound</A> and <A HREF="http://www.atcsd.com/RELEASES/pr020998.html">Stratified Field Technology</A>. Engineering consultant Tony Hooley heads up a team of researchers who have created what they hope will be a breakthrough in small, lightweight, highly accurate-sounding arrays of digitally driven pressure transducers.

New companies are springing up all around the web to provide songs for custom CD compilations. (See previous articles <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10185/">1</A&gt;, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10157/">2</A&gt;.) You go to the site, choose up to 70 minutes of music from their catalog, and the finished disc is mailed back to you in a couple of days for between 10 and 20 bucks. The challenge for these companies is to have an attractive catalog of artists and songs to choose from.

A recent report from <A HREF="http://www.jup.com">Jupiter Communications</A> claims that by the year 2002, fully 55% of the US population and 32% of European households will be browsing the Internet. Not only will this change the way poeple gather information for everything from fish food to concert schedules, it will also profoundly affect the way they shop.

Rumors began surfacing last month that McCormack Audio might be on the ropes. Long known for their value-oriented high-end products such as amps and preamps, the company had been struggling for the last couple of years (for reasons not connected with the quality of its products). But a savior has appeared that looks to put the company on a sure footing.

The audio business has been claiming its share of victims lately, with few companies able to reanimate once economic problems set in. Working hard to break this cycle, <A HREF="http://www.carver.com">Carver Corp.</A> became one of the first manufacturers to switch from a dealer-based operation to both dealers and internet sales.

A key benefit of working with <I>Stereophile</I> is enjoying the expertise of fellow audio nerds. After the HI-FI Show just held in Los Angeles, Jonathan Scull and Kathleen Benveniste spent a week riding up the California Coast and paid us each a visit.

For the last few months, random postings kept appearing on internet newsgroups and in my e-mail box: "Anybody know what happened to Counterpoint?" At last count there were 10,000 Counterpoint preamps, power amps, and loudspeakers fanned out across the planet, some dating back to 1977, when the company launched its first product: the SA-1 tube preamp, designed by Ed Semanko.