Nearing End of Litigation, MP3.com will offer Music Marketing Services
Music lovers who availed themselves of MP3.com's">http://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com's uploading-archiving-and-accessing services are about to become the next target market for the music industry. Nearing the end of protracted litigation brought against it by the music industry's "Big Five," the online music venture has announced a marketing service that will promote new commercial recordings directly to its users through e-mails. The recordings will be on labels under the control of MP3.com's opponents in the year-long copyright wrangle.
NEC Unveils New Technology for High-Bandwidth Data Transfer
At the recent WinHEC">http://www.microsoft.com">WinHEC '98, NEC">http://www.nec.com">NEC Electronics Inc. made available prototype sample units of 1394-to-POF (plastic optical fiber) repeater boxes that extend transmission of video, audio, and textual data over long distances via plastic optical fiber and copper media. NEC Electronics, one of the first companies to demonstrate this technology over plastic optical fiber and copper and wireless media, is also one of the first to demonstrate transmission speeds of 200Mbits/s over plastic optical fiber.
Negative feedback doesn't always decrease amplifier distortion!
Martin Colloms argues persuasively in the January 1998 Stereophile that negative feedback is not the panacea that amplifier designers believe it to be. His experience of an amplifier (the Cary CAD-805C) and a preamplifier (the Conrad-Johnson ART) that use no negative feedback other than local degeneration, yet have sound quality better than he has previously experienced, convinces him that even when a design's closed-loop distortion appears to be acceptably low, the listener is still aware of an amplifier's very distorted open-loop behavior.
Net "Radio" Thrives; May Violate Anti-Piracy Act
A few years ago, when media pundits began discussing the possible ramifications of 500 channels of television, the concept of "narrowcasting" quickly became the buzzword du jour. The idea was that programming in the future would be aimed at increasingly better-defined markets. Rather than an all-sports channel, an astute broadcaster would operate multiple channels devoted to individual sports: an all-basketball channel, for example, or round-the-clock motor sports. Advertising tailored for a tightly defined market might prove more efficient than its shotgun-effect equivalent.
Net Grows; Free Music Still Rules
All available statistics demonstrate that the Internet is still a growing phenomenon, one destined to play an increasingly important role in the distribution of information and entertainment. Recently published studies by Jupiter Media Metrix, Inc., a division of Jupiter">http://www.jupiterresearch.com">Jupiter Research, show that Internet usage has achieved greater than 50% penetration among US households, giving it what researchers call "mass-market status." Jupiter describes "online consumers" as people who have computers and Internet service provision in their homes, as opposed to having Internet access through a computer at work. "Online users," for the sake of the studies, were defined as people who use the Internet at least once per month.
Net Music Figures Prominently in Internet Tax Debate
Should Internet sales be subject to taxation? California's US Senator Diane Feinstein doesn't think so. Neither do most of her constituents in Silicon Valley, who are riding an unprecedented wave of prosperity as the growth of Internet commerce continues. Many folks outside Silicon Valley, especially traditional retailers, see no reason why e-commerce should be exempt from sales taxes.
Neuromonics Tinnitus Breakthrough?
Among the maladies to which music lovers are especially susceptible, hearing damage caused by prolonged exposure to loud sounds is perhaps the most pernicious. When you're young, you normally don't think about the consequences of cranking up the volume, but if you do that routinely, you are sure to suffer some form of hearing deficit in your later—or, in some cases, not so later—years.
New Stereophile Jazz CD Available
In his primerhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/061107compression">primer; this week on compression, Wes Phillips mentions the now-ubiquitous use of "louderization" in CD production, which fills in the musical valleys and flattens the expressionistic hills to make a recording sound uniformly loud. Stereophile editor John Atkinson has long railed against this practice, so when Bob Reina asked John to record his new jazz quartet, Attention Screen, John felt that this would be the opportunity to put his money where his mouth was. He would record the band, which mixes electric instruments—guitar and bass guitar—with acoustic—piano and drums—as though it was a classical acoustic ensemble, with no equalization and no compression. By doing so, he would demonstrate that even so, the sound would still have dynamics and impact, that making an honest recording does not have to be an obstacle to powerful sound quality.
New 10-Disc Beethoven Piano Sonata Boxed Set Available for Sale On the Web Site
We've just posted something new for sale on Stereophile's Recordingshttps://secure.stereophile.com/stereophile/record.html">Recordings; page. But this is not just any new CD release—it's a comprehensive 10-CD boxed set of Robert Silverman performing the 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas, recorded by our very own John Atkinson. Cheapskates rejoice: the complete 10-disc set retails for a very reasonable $65, bringing the price of each CD in the box to a mere $6.50.
New Acoustic Room Treatment Products
It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that an audiophile in possession of a good hi-fi must be in want of room treatment. The problem, most audiophiles agree, is that said treatment tends to be expensive, big, and fugly. Nucore Technologies, Inc. of Hillsborough, TN and RealTraps of New Milford, CT have some innovative new solutions.