Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

Onkyo To Offer Music-Download Service In U.S.

Osaka, Japan – Onkyo Entertainment Technology Corp. plans to
expand its lossless music-download service outside Japan this fall and will
bring it to the U.S. in November, the company announced.

The

e-onkyo
music service

, launched in August 2005 in Japan, delivers lossless
audio to consumers in resolutions up to 192kHz/24 bits and in such formats as
SuperAudio CD’s DSD. As of April, the service’s catalog stood at about 60,000
songs, with 1,500 of them featuring more than 96kHz/24-bit quality, the company
said.

On May 30, Onkyo plans to add music in Dolby TrueHD
5.1-channel surround sound in Japan and will expand TrueHD-encoded music to countries
outside Japan at the time service is launched in overseas markets. Multichannel
music will also be available in the multichannel FLAC and WAV formats.

In what it called a cooperative effort between Onkyo group
companies, the company said the new Onkyo TX-NR717 and TX-NR818 A/V receivers will
be capable of playing e-onkyo music files encoded in Dolby TrueHD. In Japan,
they are slated for release at the end of May.

To play back the downloaded music on the AVRs, consumers
have multiple options. One is to copy the audio data from PC to USB memory
device to access the tracks via the A/V receiver’s USB port. Another is to play
back the content from a PC or NAS drive via a home network.

The service’s audio content consists of about 1,000 tracks
across 100 albums from a variety of labels based in Japan and abroad, the
company said.

The multichannel songs will be available in 5.1-channel
Dolby TrueHD (192 kHz/24-bit, 96 kHz/24-bit),

5.1-Channel WAV (192 kHz/24-bit, 96 kHz/24-bit), and 5.1-Channel FLAC at a
tentative price of 3,000 yen ($37.56) per album and 500 yen ($6.26) per song.

Featured

Close