President's Message
March 2002

Hello Members:

0.  The renewal notice for BASS subscriptions ending in Vol. 23 No. 4 unfortunately went out late. If you renewed then, you will receive 24-2 as the first issue of your new subscription. If you want 24-1, send $10 with a note to the Society (normal back issue price $15). If you are renewing now and want 24-1, send $50 with a note to that effect and it will be sent to you immediately. We will try to mail out the notices in the future when the next to last issue of your subscription is mailed. V24-1 contains 4 meeting summaries: Scott Billington of Rounder Records, Bruce Van Allen of Boulder Amplifiers, the 2001 CES and ALMA (Loudspeaker) conventions and John Emerson's comprehensive presentation (9 pages) on antennas for digital television reception. Articles about resurrecting the AR3A, a high performance phono stage for under $100, comparative tests of phono stages and a user's report on ReplayTV combine with the usual news to fill out the 36 pages.

1.  Kits are not dead. I recently received a 48 page flyer from ramseykits.com. While there are some audio kits — an unbalanced to balanced convertor, a mini-mixer, and peak hold LED Bargraph meters — the bulk are generally hobbyist and Ham Radio oriented.

2.  Moment of truth dept.: While in the grocery checkout line I noticed someone with a box of cereal with a CD shrinkwrapped on the back. Next, the BAS CD?.

3.  "Satisfaction : The Art of the Female Orgasm" by Kim Cattrall and Mark Levinson has been published in hardcover. We are looking for a BAS member to review this, preferably with hands-on experience. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446530719

4.  A raging fire destroyed Vienna's historic Sofiensaal (built 1826) in August. It was here that Georg Solti recorded Wagner's Ring cycle (1958-65).

5.  Nine consumer-electronics manufacturers agreed on a standard for recording high-capacity DVDs, hoping to avoid the format wars that have plagued the first crop of machines. It isn't clear when the companies will begin making new recorders or how much they will cost. But the pact signals that most of the industry's heavy hitters, including Japan's Sony Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., will at least use the same technology. Today's digital-video-disc recorders use different, often incompatible formats, similar to the VHS and Beta formats of early videotape recordings. The new technology will feature optical discs with up to 27 gigabytes of video, or nearly six times the capacity of current discs, by using blue lasers to read a much finer imprint than the red lasers used today. The "blue laser" discs will have enough capacity to record 13 hours of standard TV programs and two hours in "high-definition" format, which is a much sharper picture than standard TV.

David Hadaway

President, Boston Audio Society


 

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updated 11/11/04