News

Sony has triumphed once again. The company that has until now held control of the dominant audio format, "Red Book" CD, and the dominant high-resolution audio format, SACD, will now dominate high-resolution video as well with its Blu-ray technology.

Earlier this month, we reportedhttp://stereophile.com/news/020108apple/">reported; that iPod Classic owners were experiencing hiss and DC offset problems when they updated their firmware to v1.1 from v1.03.

Don Bouchard, Ultralink/XLO Products' executive vice-president, succumbed February 7, 2008 from injuries he sustained in a motorcycle accident on December 15, 2007. Bouchard, riding with friends, had his front wheel drop into a hole in the pavement while traversing a railroad crossing and was thrown over his handlebars. The resulting injuries included a severe skull fracture, right-brain trauma, a broken clavicle, a broken rib, which punctured a lung, as well as internal trauma, multiple contusions, and bruising.

On February 5, This Week in Consumer Electronics announced that Polk Audio had announced plans to sell its I-Sonic ES2 iPod docking tabletop hi-fi ($499) and miDock Studio portable iPod speaker through the Apple website and freestanding store network. This came less than a week after Polk announced that Best Buy would carry its TSi loudspeakers, PSW powered subwoofers, select RM series drive-units and, of course, the SurroundBar 360 DVD Theater (all of which are currently available from the rival Circuit City chain).

You thought the only new articles about CDs you'd be reading would be about further declines in sales? Well, it turns out that ArkivMusichttp://www.arkivmusic.com">ArkivMusic;, the country's leading website for new and formerly out-of-print classical recordings, posted, um, record sales last year.

When last we heard business news from NHT, it had been acquired">http://stereophile.com/news/051506nht/">acquired by Vinci Labs in 2006. Today, NHT managing director Chris Byrne told Stereophile, "We are sitting down right now and signing the papers to purchase NHT, Inc. from Vinci Labs, creating NHT Audio, LLC."

Audio Research, one of the companies that created the Silver Age of American high-end audio 38 years ago, was acquired by Italian private equity firm Quadrivio SGR on January 25. Quadrivio, which acquired Sonus Faber in 2007, intends to keep Audio Research's current management team in place.