Some Discs Are More Super Than Others
Monster Cable has begun shipping a new series of "SuperDiscs"—specially remastered, limited edition CD/DVD combinations and special release DVDs—designed to excite audio consumers about high-quality multichannel music possibilities.
Some Rights Reserved
Running counter to the music industry's paranoia concerning the perils of modern digital technology, some musicians want you to share their music—within limits. GarageBand.comhttp://www.garageband.com">GarageBand.com;, which bills itself as "the world's largest musician community," announced June 7 that it now offers the Creative Commons Music Sharing License as an optional tag for all songs uploaded to its website.
Somebody Let Them Know It's Not Quite Set Yet . . .
In anticipation of the upcoming 1.0 DVD-Audio specification (see previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10236/">previous article), Sonic">http://www.sonic.com/">Sonic Solutions and Warner">http://www.warnerbros.com/frame_moz3_day.html">Warner Music Group wasted no time in announcing their intent to collaborate in creating new multichannel high-density recordings to showcase the new format. Warner was one of the first major labels to deliver music via CD, and Warner's video division has never been shy in their support of Open-DVD for video. So it comes as no surprise that they're one of the first major music houses out of the gate for the audio version of DVD.
Sometimes Shorter is Better
In a move that it says is designed to position it for "continued growth and leadership in the consumer electronics field," the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association (CEMA) unveiled last week its new incarnation: the Consumer">http://www.cemacity.org">Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). The announcement comes on the heels of a decision, made earlier this week by the Board of Governors of the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA), to allow separate incorporation for its sector associations.
Songwriters Win Royalty Suit
When do fractions of pennies add up to millions of dollars? Answer: When they are accumulated unpaid royalties for one of the most popular albums of all time.
Sonic Boom
When it comes to dynamic range, it's the little things that count. As Texas">http://www.ti.com">Texas Instruments explains, "Dynamic range is a parameter that expresses numerically how accurately sounds of small amplitude can be reproduced without distortion." In other words, the higher the dynamic range, the higher the quality of the sound, especially at low levels.
Sonic Breakthrough Claimed by North American Products
The object of the audio game, as Stereophile founder J. Gordon Holt put it, is "to re-create original acoustic events as accurately as possible." That goal has driven engineers to extraordinary lengths, improving every link in the recording and playback chain. Most such improvements are incremental, but their cumulative effect is the sometimes astounding level of sonic realism available today from even moderately priced equipment.
Sonic Solutions and Sony Partner to Deliver Internet Audio
In a statement that may have far-reaching ramifications for the online digital music-distribution business, last week Sonic">http://www.sonic.com">Sonic Solutions and Sonyhttp://www.sony.co.jp">Sony; announced at the Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES) in Paris that they would collaborate to integrate Sony's ATRAC3 (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding 3) into iMaster, Sonic's suite of tools for the preparation of compressed audio for Internet distribution.
Sonic Solutions Ships DVD-Authoring System
DVD-Audio may have gotten a boost on the production end with the impending release of DVD-Audio Creator LE, an authoring system developed and marketed by Sonic">http://www.sonic.com">Sonic Solutions. Available October 15, the authoring system will sell for $5999, a price that could enable many small recording studios and mastering houses to begin working with the format. "DVD-Audio Creator LE puts powerful tools in the hands of professional mastering studios at a very low cost," said Dietrick Hardwick, DVD-Audio product manager at Sonic Solutions. "This enables facilities to significantly expand their service offerings by providing their clients DVD-Audio title creation at an affordable price."
Sonic Solutions, Wolfson Microelectronics Push High-Rez Audio Development
Little noted by the mainstream media, technology companies are pushing ahead with research and development programs for high-resolution audio. Two announcements in late April indicate that neither DVD-Audio nor the Super Audio CD is a passing fancy.