Huge Asian Electronics Fair – The Hong Kong Electronics Fair, Autumn Edition 2008 opening yesterday at two venues in Hong Kong and runs thru Thursday. New exhibitors from Canada, the Czech Republic, France and the United Arab Emirates will show products. Exhibits include AV products, electronic accessories, telecommunications, multimedia, home appliances and more. Last year the fair attracted over 58,000 buyers from 160 countries. It is the second-largest electronics fair in the world and the largest of its kind in Asia. Hong Kong continues to be a leading light in the electronics industry; its exports of electronics products grew by 10.5% in the first six months of this year.
Free Download of “Night on Bald Mt.” – Just in time for Halloween, Telarc Records and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra are giving away a free iTunes download of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, as orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov. The musical depiction of a witches’ Sabbath is regularly heard around Halloween and was visualized in Disney’s original Fantasia. Go to www.telarc.com/freedownload for the download.
AES Fallout From Anti-SACD Paper – The paper the Audio Engineering Society published in their September 2007 Journal – “Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Audio Playback,” by E. Brad Meyer and David R. Moran – created, according to the AES, “intense debate and opinion on this topic.” The writers were allowed to respond to the letters and emails and after reviews of the results the AES chose not to publish any of them, citing lack of scientific content in the exchanges. Very appropriate, since the original paper lacked the slightest scientific approach and was slanted to support the absurd premise that no test subjects could hear the slightest difference between a standard 44.1K CD and the same material on a SACD. The AES should never have published the paper in the first place. Only AES members may post comments at www.AES.org/journal.
Digital Freedom Campaign for Digital Rights – The DFC is an organization lobbying Capitol Hill for less government restrictions on digital technology, in an effort to allow greater portability of lawfully-purchased media between various devices. A spokesman said ”Individuals have rights – not just the RIAA and studios. We want to buy and own the rights to listen to music when we want and how we want to. We need to make our voices heard and begin to exercise those rights.” The Consumer Electronics Association and other groups have funded the organization which was founded in 2006. Visit them at www.DigitalFreedom.org
