May 2017 – FTI

PRESS RELEASE – Falcon Technologies International and Verbatim sign exclusive distribution agreement for the Middle Eastern region.

Falcon Technologies International (FTI) has announced the signing of an exclusive agreement with Verbatim, the storage media giant owned by Mitsubishi Chemical Media, to distribute Verbatim products to countries in the Middle East.

This agreement comes after several years of mutual collaboration between the two companies, and allows FTI to distribute the full range of Verbatim products as well as products from Freecom, a brand also owned by Mitsubishi Chemical Media that specialises in high-end external SSDs and hard drives. The deal was finalized and signed during the recent FTI Customer Seminar 2017, which was hosted in Ras Al Khaimah (UAE) on April 4^thand 5^th and attended by many leading players within the global optical media industry.

FTI CEO Michael Gutowski said, “FTI are both honored and excited to have reached an agreement with Verbatim to exclusively distribute their brands within the Middle East. Our cooperation over recent years has been beneficial for both parties and has given us insight into the mutual emphasis and care that both our organizations place on innovation and quality, so we feel there is a strong synergy of values between FTI and Verbatim. We very much look forward to building upon our partnership and further developing the business footprint of both FTI and Verbatim within the Middle East”.

Gary Milner, VP Sales & Marketing at Verbatim GmbH said, “As the world’s leading Optical Storage brand, we have felt that there is a substantial opportunity to gain additional market share in what is a highly dynamic region. By partnering with FTI, we believe that the combination of our product innovation and FTI reputation for quality will be a new powerful force in the region, delivering unprecedented levels of customer service and availability – not previously seen before for the Verbatim brand.

We feel that FTI are a great choice of strategic partner as we seek to raise our profile in this region, not just because of their local market knowledge but also due to their shared commitment to delivering the best quality optical media solutions to customers all over the world.”

How smartphones became our personal portable data banks

During last couple of decades, it is stating the obvious to say that mobile telecommunications has entirely changed the world we live in. Over this period we have gradually switched from handwritten paper contact notebooks to electronic contact records in our mobile phones, however it is not only the phone numbers we store in our phones anymore: with the development of smartphones, they became or own personal data banks.

Alongside the contacts, our small electronic friends now store so much data (passwords, photos, music, sometimes even medical records and biometric parameters etc.) that losing our device would most likely be a total disaster for one’s day-to-day routine. Some people even don’t remember their passwords from social media accounts, because their phones keep them securely stored in their memory.

Loss of that sensitive data may be a problem, but it is transfer to another device is even more problematic.

Everyone has, least once in their life, switched from one mobile phone to another. Back in 2000’s it wasn’t such a big deal: you switched the SIM card and all your data is easily transferred to the new phone. Those were the good old days when the contacts were stored on the SIM card and there was no hassle with gigabytes of photos and music. These earlier phones pretty much were meant to ring and exchange texts back then: no cameras, no players, not even mentioning the mobile internet.

It was later in 2006-2007, when the smartphone market started to emerge, the problem of data transfer between two devices became bigger when different mobile operating systems decided to develop in completely different directions.

By the beginning of 2010’s it became obvious that data transfer between Android and iOS devices became so difficult and time consuming, that leading developers could not ignore consumers’ complaints anymore, and a revolutionary step was taken.

As one of the market leaders and most innovative consumer electronics companies, Apple made iPhone owners’ life easier, by launching of the “Move to iOS” app that provided an easy way to move contacts and other data from an Android phone to an iPhone.

Google, as Apple’s biggest rivals on mobile operating systems market, developed similar technology in their own mobile device, called Pixel. They even included a dedicated adapter to make data transfer procedure easier.

According to Google, the new Pixel phones ship with a dedicated Switch capability that allows users to transfer contacts, calendar events, photos, videos, music, SMS messages, iMessages and more from one device to the other. Quick Switch Adapter technology is a dedicated On the Go adapter that is shipped within the Pixel box, which Google confirms within its Pixel specs.

Google describes the switch as a three-step process. Older phones have to run on Android 5.0 and up, or iOS 8 and above for iPhones.

If data has to be transferred from an older Android phone, the process is relatively simple. For iPhone users, they turn off iMessage and FaceTime, then remove the SIM card. Then it is required to sign into your Google Account from the Pixel. Finally, Google will ask the user to select what data needs to be imported.

Once that’s all decided, Google takes over and migrates the requested data. It’s as simple as that.

These developments are a great example of how consumers benefit from a healthy market competition and innovative thinking about how to secure personal data that smartphones carry nowadays. Anyone who is somehow related to IT industry will tell you: ALWAYS do backups of your data. No matter how secure you think all the cloud technology systems and personal hard drives are, just remember one thing: once data is lost – it is lost forever.

Therefore, as a conclusion to this article, we at Falcon Technologies International strongly recommend to use dedicated archival optical media solutions to store all the sensitive and valuable data, that you would like to keep secure for a long time. It doesn’t take too much time to burn couple of DVDs, but it will ensure that your data is insured.

High-resolution audio: everything you need to know

High-resolution audio (HRA) has emerged as arguably the ultimate sonic selection for digital music fans, but what’s it all about, what do you need and how can you get it?

In the last couple of years, high-resolution audio (HRA) has hit the mainstream sound recording and distribution, due to the release of more devices and services that support the new format.

From dedicated devices like Neil Young’s PonoPlayer and the latest Sony Walkmans, to games consoles like the Play Station 4, smartphones like the Sony Xperia Z5 it seems everyone’s is joining this movement towards taking of the sound recording industry to the next level of quality.

So how does high-res differ from standard digital music formats? Downloads from sites such as Amazon and iTunes, and streaming services such as Spotify, use compressed file formats with relatively low bitrates, such as 256kbps AAC files on iTunes and 320kbps MP3 streams on Spotify.

The use of AAC or MP3 compression leads to partial data loss in the encoding process, which means resolution is sacrificed for the sake of convenience and smaller file sizes. With regards to sound quality, then, these formats aren’t telling the full story of our favourite songs. This might be fine on the bus when you’re listening to your smartphone, but serious music fans should want better. This is where high-resolution audio – or HRA, the term coined by the Consumer Electronics Association – steps in.

Astell & Kern, LG, Samsung, Sony and Pioneer are just some of the companies to have launched hi-res audio compatible products, while several download sites now offer. HRA also has the support of major labels and musicians.

It’s worth pointing out that the definition of high-resolution audio isn’t set in stone. Unlike high-definition video, which has to meet certain criteria to earn the name, there’s no universal standard for hi-res audio.

But the term tends to refer to audio that has a higher sampling frequency. High-resolution audio files usually use a sampling frequency of 96kHz or 192kHz at 24-bit, but you can also have 88.2kHz and 176.4kHz files too.

Sampling frequency refers to the number of times samples are taken per second when the analogue sound waves are converted into digital. The more bits there are, the more accurately the signal can be measured in the first place, so 16-bit to 24-bit can reveal a noticeable leap in quality.

There are several high-resolution audio file formats to choose from, all of which support the above sampling rates and bit-depths. They include FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), both of which are compressed but in a way where (in theory) no information is lost.

Other formats include WAV, AIFF and DSD, the format used for Super Audio CDs. The relative merits of the formats can be argued, but most crucial will be compatibility with your particular products and system.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has issued a logo that will show up on every track and album that can be classed as hi-res audio.

Obviously the main claimed benefit of high-resolution audio files is superior sound quality over compressed audio formats. To illustrate why they should sound better than MP3s, for example, let’s compare the relative bitrates. The highest quality MP3 has a bitrate of 320kbps, whereas a 24-bit/192kHz file is transferred at a rate of 9216kbps.

24-bit/96k or 24-bit/192kHz files should therefore more closely replicate the sound quality that the musicians and engineers were working with in the studio.

With more information to play with, high-resolution audio tends to boast greater detail and texture, bringing listeners closer to the original performance.

Manufacturers including Bowers & Wilkins, Naim and Linn have been pushing for and producing high-resolution audio products for some time. We’ve now seen mass-market heavyweights such as LG, Samsung and Sony adopt the format to bring it to a larger audience.

With this wider availability, more people are able to learn and understand exactly what high-resolution audio is, and the benefits it can bring to music. There’s plenty of content out there, and there’s plenty of hardware to go with it. The future for the format looks – and sounds – very bright indeed.

At Falcon Technologies International we firmly believe in the core brand values that our brand is build on, and one of them is Quality. High resolution audio format development is very important step for overall music industry, that is currently taking the entire market to the next level.

As a company that have been continuously making efforts to improve the quality of our products, we understand the importance and praise development of such initiatives as high resolution audio standardization and introduction to the mass market.

Falcon Technologies International has specially designed product line to provide quality media storage for professional duplication and replication – DUPLI Line.

It performs to good quality level with benchmark and quality control tests proving that Dupli Line products have one of the lowest variability rates throughout the industry, which makes them a perfect solution for media duplication. Also, DUPLI Line comes with a no failure guarantee, so that media distributors can be sure that the end consumer will be able to enjoy the high quality media from a high quality storage medium.

Source: WhatHiFi