Wes Phillips

The Emmeline SR-71 portable headphone amplifier ($395) is small but not light. Housed in an extruded-aluminum chassis with a bolt-on faceplate and a rear panel and battery cover that attaches with a thumb-screw, it measures 3.5" by 2.5" by 1.5" and weighs 11oz. That <I>sounds </I>light, especially compared to some of the headphone amps I've carted around in the past&mdash;not to mention their four&ndash;D-cell extended power supplies&mdash;but in the iPod era, it's the portable equivalent of a class-A power amp. So why would anybody be willing to lug it around?

As we reported <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/082905recording/"&gt; August 29</A>, Sony BMG and the Warner Music Group, among others, have begun questioning the now defacto per song price of 99&#162; set by Apple's iTunes Music Store.

<I>Rocky Mountain Audio High:</I> The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest will be held at the Denver Marriott Tech Center Hotel (4900 South Syracuse; Denver, CO) from September 30 through October 2. In addition to over 70 demo rooms, there will be seminars and musical entertainment. Details and pre-registration can be found <A HREF="http://www.audiofest.net/ShowInfo.htm">here</A&gt;.

It appears that a lot of respondents to last week's Vote! must not listen actively

This is the time of year we are generally inundated with press releases announcing new home theater products that debuted at CEDIA Expo last week (and as audionerds, er 'philes, we <I>are</I> fascinated, of course). However, this year we also received word of some interesting audio products from two of the most consistently innovative high-end audio companies, Meridian and Class&#233;.

<I>We were saddened to learn just this week that F. Alton Everest died earlier in the month. Like many audiophiles, much of what we know about acoustics was gleaned from Everest's authoritative books on the subject, including several editions of his </I>Master Handbook of Acoustics<I>, </I>Critical Listening and Auditory Perception<I>, and </I>Acoustical Techniques for Home and Studio<I>. Everest packed a lot of living into 95 years, earning a BSc in EE from Oregon State and an EE from Stanford. He taught at Oregon State and Hong Kong Baptist Universities, worked in film production for 25 years, and was an acoustic consultant for 15. During WWII, he spent four years in undersea acoustic research. He was an Emeritus Member of the Acoustical Society, Life Member of the IEEE, Life Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Member of the Audio Engineering Society, and cofounder and past president of American Scientific Affiliation.

Last June, Sennheiser, a multinational manufacturer of microphones, headphones, and wireless technology products, celebrated its 60th anniversary. The company was founded as Wennebostel Laboratories (Labor W) in 1945 by Dr. Fritz Sennheiser and seven other employees of the Institute for Radio Frequency Engineering and Electroacoustics at Hanover Technical University. At the time, as Dr. Sennheiser explained when I visited the company's Wennebostel facility 10 years ago, German radio engineers were prohibited by the occupying Allied forces from constructing communications equipment, so he and his crew needed to find something else they could do. In addition, supply shortages severely restricted the scope of what they might manufacture. Sennheiser determined that they could build test instruments such as millivolt meters from the parts they were able to recover from the Institute and the Allies. Seimens' Hanover branch bought the first samples and the startup company began to supply that firm with more and more complex products.