Industry Talk

Even at high sample rates, standard PCM audio ‘smears’ important timing information. A new digital format, MQA, promises vastly improved time-domain accuracy — without the huge file sizes.

To celebrate the magazine’s 30th birthday, the SOS team take a trip back in time, finding out what it was really like to work in a mid-’80s home studio.

Have you ever wondered exactly what goes on when classic hardware is recreated in plug-in form? Heres the full story from some of the industrys biggest names.

Since Bill Putnam's sons founded Universal Audio anew, the company have become well known for software emulations of old gear, as well as for their hardware recreations of vintage classics. We find out how they go about it...

Hard drives are getting bigger and that can only be good, right? Well, up to a point...

With the release in the UK of XP Media Center Edition, Microsoft aim to make Windows PCs a modern equivalent of the radiogram — the heart of a complete music and video home. entertainment system.

We explore the idea of understanding technology in terms of layers and abstractions, and how this makes it possible for a protocol like MIDI to be communicated via USB, Firewire and even Bluetooth.

We look at the reliability of hard drives and investigate some innovative video-related products from Sony, which could soon be commonplace in the audio world.

With the recent announcement of Yamaha's keenly priced 01X Music Production Studio, it looks as though mLAN, the Firewire-based protocol for multi-channel digital audio and MIDI, might be about to come of age. We take an early look at the new system.

There are many reasons why the digital delivery of media hasn't replaced traditional physical methods, but could one reason be that files just aren't very collectable?

A new interfacing standard is just around the corner which can carry digital audio, MIDI, timecode and hard drive communications down a single cable, in addition to the digital video and multimedia signals which the likes of Sony, Apple and others are already sending down it. Paul Wiffen, long an advocate of high-speed digital interfaces, investigates and finds that he may just have a new religion to evangelise.

Commercial singles and albums are incorporating ever-more-sophisticated interactive audio and visual content, often using the Enhanced CD format. Janet Harniman-Cook starts this two-part feature with a look at how the format is being used by record companies, and the possibilities that are open to independent musicians.

Ian Gilby asks the question.