In a landmark special feature, Chris Dunn & Malcolm Omar Hawksford thoroughly dissect the vicissitudes of the digital interface and jitter in Bits is Bits? The authors note, "The theoretical performance obtainable from the 16-bit linear PCM format sampled at 44.1kHz is superior to any analog sources available to the consumer."

From September 1992, the late Peter Mitchell proves remarkably prescient with "A Question of Bits." PM writes, "Someday we may speak wistfully to our grandchildren about the 'golden age' of digital audio when consumer formats contained a bitstream that was an exact bit-for-bit duplicate of the original studio master recording—not a digitally compressed, filtered, copy-resistant version whose sound is 'close enough' to the original."

George Reisch grapples with "Auditions, the Audio Press, & Neo-fatalism," explaining, "Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes thought they were investigating the very fabric of reality. But they may have been merely lost inside a grammatical house of mirrors. I wonder if some of audio's big questions are like this."

Finally, from the December 1998 issue, John Atkinson explains what the modern car market has to do with audio in "Bang For the Buck: Quality vs Cost." In audio, as with cars, we can ask whether more money always buys better quality. JA begins, saying, "I don't feel we're deaf to the improvements you can buy if you have the disposable income."