John Gatski is the Publisher & Executive Editor of Pro Audio Review.
It is never easy to say goodbye to family, friends and coworkers, but that is what we at PAR did with the departure of longtime managing editor Brett Moss to our sister title, Radio World International.
Brett joined PAR as the equipment editor back in 1998, and was instrumental in establishing relationships with the various manufacturers and the reviewers. He spent many a long hours working on PAR (five o'clock, what's that?), especially all those years doing the original “Gear Guide.” He was also a champion at the trade shows, picking up every press kit known to man and attending all the press conferences that I missed.
But all is not lost despite the loss. Brett remains close by in his tiny cubicle, which he inherited from me, to help out our new managing editor, Tony Ware, and Reviews Editor Strother Bullins.
THE NEW GUY
Tony Ware, a freelance writer and pro audio enthusiast, has vast writing and magazine experience, and will work with Strother and me to continue our tradition of publishing the most thorough reviews in the biz. Besides his journalism skills, Tony is a big fan of high-resolution audio recordings and fancies himself quite the wine expert. Welcome aboard Tony, and can you recommend a good Shiraz for under a buck? Just kiddin'.
Gear Guide is New Again
It's “Gear Guide” time again. 2007 is our 11th year of publishing the “Gear Guide.” We changed the format beginning in 2006 to reflect more on the new products that most readers wanted to know about.
The “New Gear Guide” is available to the 26,000 print subscribers, plus 54,000 receiving the digital edition distribution. Additionally, it will be available to everyone who accesses our web site (nearly 100,000 visitors monthly) via a downloadable PDF with live URL links. And, of course, the “Gear Guide” still has the best damn manufacturer directory in pro audio. I call it my “desktop” database, which is always perched on my physical desktop.
New High-Res Possibilities
I am excited about these new optical media storage technologies destined for video: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I am sure you heard about their 15GB (HD-DVD single layer) to 25GB (Blu-Ray single layer) capacities to store up to 1080p high definition video. But did you know that these two formats (yeah, I know, another format war) also offer plenty of space for room for high-bit, PCM audio?
The current standards of both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats allow for compressed or uncompressed multichannel high-bit PCM, the latter a feature never standardized for DVD-Video. The standard for DVD-Video limited uncompressed audio to two channel-only 24-bit/96-kHz (or 48-kHz), and standard compression multichannel audio formats to Dolby Digital or DTS.
DVD-Audio and its sibling, DualDisc, offer stereo and multichannel high-bit rate audio, but those formats have languished from a lack of commitment by the music industry with too few players and too few titles.
The disc capacity is so vast with the new formats, however, that high-res audio could be used in a number of ways, including uncompressed or “lossless” compressed (from Dolby and DTS' new codecs) movie soundtracks, video concert soundtracks or, perhaps, just straight-up music releases in surround and stereo. Heck, some artists could have their entire career on one disc.
From a pro standpoint, these discs could be the new digital multitrack recording media standard bearer, replacing digital and analog tape. Hard drives still are not as portable as a skinny optical disc. Two-sided, dual-layer Blu-Ray discs, for example, will offer 100GB capacity.
Stay tuned. PAR plans on covering the twists and turns of these new formats that will, hopefully once and for all, move us beyond the 25-year-old CD audio limit.
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