Audio News - AUDIOPHILE AUDITION

Higher Incomers Buy More Home Electronics - An Irish market research firm has offered a Luxury Tracking Report which in its first iteration surveyed 717 affluent consumers with over $75,000 household income and who purchased at least one luxury item in the third quarter of 2004. During this period their consumption of travel, fine dining, jewelry, watches and various service businesses fell, but they bought more home luxuries - with the greatest increase tracked in home electronics and photography.

Record Company Beefs With Apple - The major record labels basically put the online digital music business into Apple’s hands with the iTunes Music Store. Apple doesn’t make much off iTunes after payments are made to publishers, labels and artists, but they make a bundle selling iPods. However, the labels have different aims in selling their music from the 99 cents per track of iTunes. They would prefer various pricing methods like charging less for reissue material and more for newer tracks and albums - helping them take advantage of the demands for music and maximize their revenue. Some labels are now looking into different ways to sell digital music, including even digital downloads to cell phones.

Beefing Up the “Betamax” Decision - The Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC) endorses the legislation known as The Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Art of 2005 (H.R. 1201). It would codify into U.S. law the Supreme Court’s 1984 landmark decision in the Betamax case. It would assure “fair use” protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for consumers, libraries, universities, archivists and other lawful users of copyrighted works. HRRC Chairman Gary Shapiro said “Without the protection of this doctrine...large corporate content providers would exercise a veto over every new function of every new [electronic] product.”

Music Servers Make Inroads in Home Audio - Putting both existing collections of discs and Internet downloads of music on music servers in the home may become a mass market given sooner than we thought. Both hard drive storage and bandwidth have come down in cost, codecs are improving, and some audiophiles don’t even data-reduce their PCM files before putting on the servers. Products are beginning to appear to serve the server fans. The Blackbird Digital Music Player is designed especially for audio storage and playback (we hope to obtain one for review soon), and Integra has released the NAS-2.6 with a 160GB hard drive. One concern in addition to sonic quality is whether digital rights management software will allow unimpeded copying.