Audio News - AUDIOPHILE AUDITION

Philadelphia Orchestra Records Again - After nearly a decade without new CD releases - since Sony Classical dropped them - the Philadelphia Orchestra has announced signing a three-year recording partnership with the Finnish classical label Ondine Records. A new recording contract was one of the goals of Christopher Eschenbach when he took over as Music Director of the Orchestra. The first disc will be released this fall, and the entire series will be recording in multichannel during live concerts and issued on hybrid SACDs. The project has similarities to the self-labels launched by the San Francisco and the London Symphony Orchestras, although it with an already-existing label. The high rates required by the American Federation of Musicians for U.S.-based labels to record American orchestras has prevented many of the leading orchestras from recording. The AF of M is currently reconsidering their rates to encourage more recording activity by U.S. orchestras.

CEA/FCC News - The Consumer Electronics Association has asked the FCC to not allow the 50% DTV tuner mandate timetable desired by TV manufacturers. It calls for 50% of new analog (NTSC) TV sets to incorporate a digital tuner to receive DTV signals by July 1 of this year. The CEA wants a 100% deadline to ensure a faster transition to digital broadcasting. This step could also decrease the number of TV sets manufactured with ATSC tuners. In another DTV matter, the U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that the FCC has no jurisdiction in the so-called “broadcast flag” regulations. The regulation was designed to protect OTA (over-the-air) TV content from mass redistribution over the Internet. The CEA states that the freedom to innovate should be preserved while still protecting the interests of copyright owners, and that the court ruling will not impact the ongoing transition to DTV. They urge policy makers to help accelerate the transition by setting a hard date for the ending of analog TV signals.

Audio Pioneer Bud Fried Dies - Speaker-designer Irving M. Fried, who was age 85, was a no-nonsense sort of music lover and audiophile who began by importing Lowther corner horns and Quad electrostatic speakers into the U.S. He registered his IMF trademark in l961. Some of his contributions to the speaker art were the first modern satellite-subwoofer system, the first satellite transmission line subwoofer and the B satellite series. His enthusiastic promotion of transmission line design is at least partly responsible for the increasing number of speakers which incorporate it.