Jon Iverson

DVD-Audio has been "almost here" for so many months that it seemed almost anticlimactic when the first players finally emerged on dealer shelves this week. Late in May of this year, <A HREF="http://www.panasonic.com">Panasonic</A&gt; announced (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10757/">previous story</A>) that they would be releasing two players, one under the Panasonic banner and the other under the company's Technics brand, in July. It looks as if they've finally made good on their promise.

Judging from the e-mails we get, some folks wonder why <I>Stereophile</I>'s website continues to cover the advance of such lo-fi formats as MP3 as well as the problems encountered by companies like Napster as they tangle with the music business. But consider this: a new study reports that the market for digital music players will grow to $6.4 billion in 2005&mdash;more than 34 times 1999 shipments&mdash;which is also nearly 80% of the $8 billion reported for sales of <I>all</I> audio products, including portables, from last year (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10677/">previous article</A>).

One can almost imagine how it all started: "Hey, you got a computer in my audio system." "No, you got an audio system in my computer . . . "

CD changers holding hundreds of discs at a time have found their place in a sizable percentage of consumer homes, and have proven especially useful in the custom installation market. Fans of these mega-changers love to drop their discs into one place, never having to crack open a CD case again. Drawbacks, however, include not being able to easily move the disc from home to car or portable, and the mechanical whirring and clanking the machines make as they slowly plow through the user's playlist.

When spying this press release a couple of days ago, I had to read it twice&mdash;this was too good to be true. A couple of years back in the September 1997 (or as JA likes to put it: Vol.20 No.9) <I>Stereophile</I> "Industry Update," I had reported on the then-discovered "synchronicities" phenomena: playing certain classic rock albums, when sync'ed up with certain classic films yielded several uncanny coincidences twixt music and screen. Watching and listening this way could lead one to almost believe that the albums were created as soundtracks to the films.

Remember FM radio's effect on college campuses years ago? Free music, usually without commercials (college stations are largely non-profit), and very flexible playlists made or broke new bands. Fast-forward to 2000. Students now spend most of their time downloading MP3 files for free over the Internet for playback on their computers. As before, new artists often benefit from this phenomena, but record companies are increasingly seeing the students as pirates rather than consumers.

Waiting for the Holy Grail of DVD-Audio? Even with players still distant on the horizon, one can now begin building a DVD-Audio music library with discs compatible with current DVD-Video players. At least that's the strategy offered at the recent High End 2000 show in Frankfurt, Germany this past week.