ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Gossip&News Feedback has been bought by smartphone maker HTC. You can see what they’re up to. A prominent competitor, Sony-Ericsson, already has its own brand of headphones, Walkman (the brand has been allowed to go to seed, but never mind). HTC is a major maker of Android phones, with a strong contingent of presumably street savvy young customers. Can being associated with a rapper be a bad thing? So, let’s see…HTC now has 51% of Beats (for $300 million), and there’s speculation that it is interested more in the brand than in the original headphones (which are more than pretty good, by the way). Beats continues its partnership with Hewlett-Packard (it designed a branded sound system for laptops), as well as Chrysler and of course Monster. We don’t know how much mileage Sony-Ericsson is getting from the Walkman association, but it has sunk to tenth position in the list of the world’s top ten phone makers according to a Gartner report. Taiwan’s HTC is seventh. But someone has been watching the success of Beats, because there’s another headphone brand, called Soul, fronted by a hip hop artist. A Beats near lookalike, the SL300, is also active and noise-cancelling, with a tangle-proof detachable cord, and is also backed by a hip hop artist, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges. Like the Beats, the 80 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY <strong>Magazine</strong> Souls are available at the Apple Store, Amazon, and the usual suspects. The price, $299, is slightly lower than the list price of the Beats. So…are they as good as the Beats? Beats us! Why Is This Man Smiling? Have you followed the doings of Netflix in the US? What a circus it’s been! The company began life some years back offering DVD’s by mail, and more recently moved into film streaming. This past summer it split up the two functions, all but doubling the subscription price for most customers. When there was a massive backlash, and the exit of nearly a million customers, Netflix then spun off the DVD-by-mail service as a new company with a nearly-unspellable name, Qwikster. It then backtracked on the spinoff, but not on the doubling of costs. If the late Steve Jobs was lionized this Fall as the world’s best CEO, there were lots of people prepared to nominate Netflix’s Reed Hastings, shown here, as the world’s worst. (Oh, except for that guy, Léo Apotheker, who was 11 months into his reign at HP, the world’s number one computer maker, and announced HP would no longer make computers; but at least he got the boot. The boot…and about 25 million dollars!) Hastings, by the way, claims that Netflix needs the money (don’t we all), but he also says that the Canadian Netflix operation (streaming only, $8 per month for all you can eat) is profitable. We suspect creative accounting. The Canadian film lineup remains pitiful, with a number of titles that seem to have bypassed cinemas to go straight to Netflix. Maybe we’re being difficult, but streaming movies from Canadian Netflix is like renting DVDs from the corner gas station. And need we stress once again that Netflix’s “HD” movies, like those of its competitors, are not really HD? And that they may blow enough Internet bandwidth to run you into extra charges with your service provider? Long live Blu-ray! goodbye Blockbuster It’s not as though we couldn’t see this coming. The US parent of Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy back in April, and was picked up, for reasons that totally escape us, by DISH TV. That should have doomed the Canadian branch, and ultimately it did, the following month in fact, but why? Fact is, the Canadian branch was profitable. Surprised? It’s easy to see the reason. In the US (and only in the US) such companies as Netflix, Apple, Google and Boxee have a vast choice of movies available on line. True, on-line movies are compressed, but then hamburgers are compressed too, and we don’t see McDo and Burger King closing shop. In Canada, by contrast, the on-line movie offerings are so slim they are a cruel joke. Result: the market for DVD rentals is much larger here. So why is Canada’s Blockbuster closing down, again? Blame globalization. And prepare to get angry. When the US business sank, its board of directors tried desperately to stay afloat, which meant it needed cash.
Blockbuster Canada, which is of course separately incorporated, co-signed for a loan for its US parent. But that loan isn’t going to be repaid, for obvious reasons. So a whole lot of Canadians are going to lose their jobs for nothing. For nothing! For what it’s worth, where we live (the Montreal area) there is a video rental chain that seems to be prospering (we won’t name them because we don’t love them that much). It has seen the handwriting on the wall, and it has adopted the Netflix-USA formula. For $10 a month, you can take out any three films, including Blu-ray but excluding new releases, and keep them as long as you want. When you return them, you can take out three more. It must be working, because the company has just taken over a location recently vacated by…Blockbuster! We Are All Audiophiles What percentage of the population can be described as audiophiles? One percent? Less? That would be our guess, but of course it depends on your definition. How about 34%? Yes, it shocked us too, but the Consumer Electronics Association, the people who organize the big CES show in Vegas every January, ran a survey revealing that audiophiles, or what it calls “audio enthusiasts,” are some 34%. Of course CEA did its survey in the US. The methodology is not revealed, and the full study is available only to CEA members (UHF is in fact on the CEA Advisory Board, but we are not members). The study goes on to say that an equal number has a “moderate” interest in audio. For all we know that may mean they don’t leave the sound down when they watch a movie. But CEA says it means “they are willing to pay more for high-quality audio electronics, like receivers and speakers.” But how much more? Does it mean paying $300 for a home-theatre-in-a-box instead of $200? Does it mean listening to digital radio (ugh!), or paying an installer to put speakers in the ceiling of every room? Does it mean still owning a CD player? We would like to believe those figures, we really would, but we are finding it hard. What do you think? ADVERTISERS ADL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Allnic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 April Music . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2 Audiophile Boutique . . . . . . . . . 44 Audiophile Store . . . . . . . . . . 55-62 Audio Zendo . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 3 Audiyo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 BIS Audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Blue Circle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Charisma Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Europroducts International . . . 11, 15 Furutech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Hammertone Audio . . . . . . . . . . 12 Liberty Trading . . . .Cover 2, Cover 4 Madison Audio Lab . . . . . . . . . . 14 Maggie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Mutine . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cover 3 Roksan . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cover 4 Simaudio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Simon Yorke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Super Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Thorens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 UHF Back Issues . . . . . . . . . . . 41 UHF Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY <strong>Magazine</strong> 81 Gossip&News Gossip&News Feedback
Page 1 and 2:
No. 91 CAN $6.49 / US $7.69 ANALOG
Page 3 and 4:
Issue No. 91 Cover story: It’s sm
Page 5 and 6:
DOG-EARED MAGAZINES ARE WRONG! And
Page 7 and 8:
I was quite impressed with Paul Ber
Page 9 and 10:
the original models — true? I can
Page 11 and 12:
An hendreet nonsenim dit, ver sustr
Page 13 and 14:
Duissi exerat, quis nos nulla feugu
Page 15 and 16:
nonullam il et, quipit in ea faccum
Page 17 and 18:
TAVES did, however, run into a prob
Page 19 and 20:
utatue consequat. Cil et veraessisl
Page 21 and 22:
seemed as if the music was elevated
Page 23 and 24:
singers use that. And it’s the fi
Page 25 and 26:
Music and memory Is there such a th
Page 27 and 28:
velendre er ing euis nonulla faccum
Page 29 and 30: sion. The dead time could be used t
Page 31 and 32: The people at Reference Recordings
Page 33 and 34: The Firebird ballet sounded disturb
Page 35 and 36: weight.” But the piano nonetheles
Page 37 and 38: Get UHF from Maggie on your desktop
Page 39 and 40: conullaor si bla consecte et exerit
Page 41 and 42: THE ACOUSTIC COLLECTION: This is th
Page 43 and 44: significant. Besides, we were reluc
Page 45 and 46: Products of special value, at The A
Page 47 and 48: speakers like those is not what the
Page 49 and 50: to the Red Book CD standard. The na
Page 51 and 52: Music was evident. “I picked up t
Page 53 and 54: INTERCONNECTS ATLAS NAVIGATOR Oxyge
Page 55 and 56: UHF14 POWER BAR Most power bars kno
Page 57 and 58: ed pepper to its music. Felix Hell
Page 59 and 60: We Get Requests (CD) An amazing 196
Page 61 and 62: There is lots of nostalgia in pop m
Page 63 and 64: them what should have been a rendez
Page 65 and 66: accum nissequam ero eraestrud dolor
Page 67 and 68: sendipit nit aliquisi eu facincidun
Page 69 and 70: lum alismolore ming esent vullamc o
Page 71 and 72: their church services. For them, an
Page 73 and 74: How to Sing the Blues Most Blues be
Page 75 and 76: unconvincing in the second. And —
Page 77 and 78: “Blu-ray Essentials” label, wit
Page 79: Apple to the rescue? With the TV bu
Page 83 and 84: Why do UHF readers start reading th
show all

ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?