Headline: WayneCorp Sees Sound Future in Hamelin
"We're very excited to have this privilege," Wayne Enterprises president and owner Bruce Wayne told reporters at a press conference earlier, "When I first saw a Hamelin system, I knew I was looking at the future. Imagine being able to take a video on your camera phone and display it on your widescreen TV with the touch of a button, or bringing your digital media library to your home theater using your regular remote. The Hamelin system lets you do all that and more."
Hamelin Electronica is the brainchild of Hartley Rathaway of Keystone City, Kansas. Rathaway, known as the "Sultan of Sound" for his genius in the area of acoustic engineering, developed the Hamelin system primarily as a means of reducing wasted resources when managing home entertainment media.
"It's a waste of time and plastic to download electronic media, burn it to disk then take it to your entertainment system," Rathaway said in a phone interview, "We have wireless and nanotechnology, it was just obvious."
The heart of the Hamelin system is the server, which also functions as the system's tuner, equalizer and amplifier. "The system is as accessable as I can make it," says Rathaway, "It's cross-platform so anyone can use it, whether they're running Windows, Macintosh, Linux, BeOS or even OS/2. It recognises all of the most popular media codecs, from AAC to MP3 to Ogg Vorbis, though it will deliver the best sound with the .FLAC lossless format."
In addition to producing the Hamelin server hardware, Wayne Enterprises' Electronics division has also contracted to produce Hamelin audio components. Rathaway says, "The audio system is optimized to work with the Hamelin server to deliver the best audio quality possible." However, Rathaway insists that purchasing a new surround speaker system is not a requirement to enjoying the benefits of Hamelin. "The Hamelin system is designed to work with your existing audio components. There's even a version of the server's software designed to run on older computers. You can still have high-quality sound management, even if your pockets aren't deep."
Rathaway, son of the late publishing tycoon Osgood Rathaway, is well known in the Twin Cities area for his humanitarian efforts for the homeless and underprivileged. Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox says, "We respect Mr. Rathaway's vision and will be working with him to deliver quality audio-visual products for all levels of income."
Wayne Enterprises is traded publically on the NYSE.