News

Stereophile writers and editors were saddened to learn of the June 27 death of colleague Timothy White, editor-in-chief of Billboardhttp://www.billboard.com">Billboard; magazine. White collapsed of an apparent heart attack in an elevator at Billboard's New York offices and died shortly thereafter at St. Vincent's Hospital. He was 50.

Lars is dead.

They have become the companies music fans around the world love to hate. But to their stockholders, the businesses developing CD-restriction technologies are a promising new technology niche for investing. SunnCommhttp://www.sunncomm.com">SunnComm; is one of these new companies dedicated to finding means to restrict the ways consumers can use compact discs, and last week they used their annual stockholder meeting as an opportunity to announce their latest copy-protection product.

Things are looking up for high-resolution audio, with price drops for DVD-Audio discs announced by one major record label in a move to attract a larger audience.

Michael Fremer heard that the Alesis">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/605/">Alesis MasterLink ML-9600 Hard Disk/CD-R Recorder "can sound better than all but the absolute top-drawer analog," and, of course, had to investigate. Mikey 'splains why audiophiles should take note of a machine generally used as a mastering tool by the recording industry.

If you've ever hunted for a song title or a performer's name on the Internet, you've probably used CDDBhttp://www.cddb.com">CDDB;, the Compact Disc Database.

SACD partisans Sony and Philips continue to release new disc players that also decode DVD-Video, but not DVD-Audio. And arch-DVD-A supporter Meridian, as well as companies such as McIntosh, are releasing DVD-A and DVD-V players that don't do SACD. But there are exceptions, notably Pioneerhttp://www.pioneerelectronics.com">Pioneer;, who debuted the first widely available "universal" player, the DV-AX10">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/515/">DV-AX10 SACD/DVD-A/CD player, last year.