News

Larry Greenhill says he'll never forget his first encounter with the Krell">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/382/">Krell LAT-1 loudspeaker at a meeting of the Westchester Audiophile Society. Suitably impressed, Greenhill reports, "I'd been bitten. I made arrangements to continue the audition in my own listening room." His complete analysis awaits.

Sharp Electronics has announced a new lineup of "one-bit" digital amplifiers that may herald a new generation of audio products.

The year has been a good one so far for New York's Harvey Electronics and for national electronics retailer the Tweeter">http://www.tweeter.com">Tweeter Group. The news isn't so rosy for West Coast chain the Good Guys.

There appears to be nothing more important to the music business today than controlling the distribution and use of digital content on the web and in the home. Proprietary schemes to prevent or control the use of audio files have become hot commodities and valuable assets for many companies. Liquid">http://www.liquidaudio.com">Liquid Audio recently announced that the US Patent Office has awarded the company a patent (#6,219,634) for its watermark technique used for distributing secure digital music files.

In what is intended to have the biggest impact yet on the thriving "rip, mix, burn" lifestyle, Macrovisionhttp://www.macrovision.com">Macrovision; has revealed that several record labels have been secretly putting its copy protection system onto new CD releases since around March of this year (see previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10985/">previous report). The process, called SafeAudio, is a Macrovision registered trademark and is intended to prevent the copying of CDs, or tracks from CDs, onto CD-R discs and computer hard drives. The technology was developed jointly by Macrovision and TTR">http://www.ttrtech.com">TTR Technologies.

We were saddened to learn of the death of audio guru Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg, who died Monday, July 16 of an apparent heart attack. He was 59.

Several months back, Stereophile editor John Atkinson asked David Rich to investigate the technical merits of SACD. With Super">http://www.stereophile.com//features/374/">Super Audio CD: The Rich Report, DR discovers that there is both more and less than meets the ear to the new format, including why it is being promoted in the first place.