Stereophile Staff

DVD-Audio is getting a boost from several directions.

It's been a rough year for the music industry—and possibly an even rougher one for audiophile labels. The Dorian Group, however, seems to be thriving. Parent company to Dorian Recordings, the Dorian Group announced last week its acquisition of Reference Recordings. During its 25 years in business, RR has consistently garnered praise from audiophiles for the sound quality of its recordings, and has scored eight Grammy nominations and two Grammy awards.

At the end of July, UK-based TAG McLaren Audio, which had been experiencing difficult trading conditions and was reducing its workforce, issued a rather pessimistic <A HREF=&rdquo; http://www.stereophile.com/shownews.cgi?1701&rdquo;>announcement</A&gt;. The core of the announcement concerned the firm's commencement of "a full strategic review of its participation in the audio market."

While audio writers find the siren song of cost-no-object components an ever-present temptation, I do ask <I>Stereophile</I>'s reviewers to be on the lookout for affordable products that sound better than they have any right to. So when I listened to an inexpensive system based on Monitor Audio's Silver S2 loudspeaker and Musical Fidelity amplification at Home Entertainment 2002, held at the Manhattan Hilton in May 2002, I followed my own instruction and asked the US distributor of this English model to send me review samples.

Ever since the introduction of high-resolution digital formats, audiophiles have been waiting for the smoke from the format wars to settle. What would the winning software be? DVD-Audio? DVD-Video? SACD? 24 bits at 96kHz or 192kHz? As new formats struggled to establish themselves, upconverting technology became commonplace for the playback of the familiar 16-bit/44.1kHz "Red Book" CD format. What to do? Invest large amounts of cash in a system that played "Red Book" (maybe with upconverting, but if so, by how much?) and one other format, and hope that you've bet right? And what about movies on them new-fangled DVDs, Tex?

An archive of articles that the late Michael Gerzon wrote for <I>Hi-Fi News</I> and <I>Studio Sound</I> magazines has been established at the <A HREF="http://www.audiosignal.co.uk">website</A&gt; of <I>Hi-Fi News</I> consultant technical editor Keith Howard.

Vinyl junkies again converged on San Luis Obispo, California on Saturday, August 16 for the second annual <A HREF="http://www.vinylrecordday.org">Vinyl Record Day</A> celebration. Vinyl is clearly red hot among audiophiles and music collectors, and VRD organizer Gary Freiberg commented that momentum for the event continues to grow, with this year's turnout easily bigger than <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11417/">last year's</A>.