<I>The <A HREF="http://www.he2006.com">Home Entertainment Show 2006</A> is only weeks away, running June 1&ndash;4 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles. Here is a sampling of some of the giveaways and special events that will take place at the Show. Several of these should be of particular interest to audiophiles.</I>

What do Black Sabbath, Wagner's <I>Gotterdammerung</I>, <I>West Side Story</I>, and the theme to <I>The Simpsons</I> have in common? A tritone known as the Devil's interval.

What the press didn't tell you about this "amazing" discovery.

A hilarious account of one man's attempt to legally download a video via Movielink.

In 1977, just as I was about to take my first faltering steps in hi-fi journalism, the UK's <I>Hi-Fi News</I> ran two articles, translated from French originals by Jean Hiraga, that seemed to me and many others to turn the audio world we knew upside down. The second of them, "Can We Hear Connecting Wires?" was published in the August issue and is the better remembered because it introduced many English-speaking audiophiles to the contention that cables can sound different. The earlier article, published in the March issue, was less earthshaking but still an eyebrow-raiser of considerable force. Simply titled "Amplifier Musicality," it was a response to the word <I>musicality</I> being increasingly used in subjectivist circles to describe the perceived performance of amplifiers and other audio components. It was implicit that musicality was a quality not captured by conventional measurement procedures&mdash;a lack of correlation that Hiraga's article sought to address.

In 1977, just as I was about to take my first faltering steps in hi-fi journalism, the UK's <I>Hi-Fi News</I> ran two articles, translated from French originals by Jean Hiraga, that seemed to me and many others to turn the audio world we knew upside down. The second of them, "Can We Hear Connecting Wires?" was published in the August issue and is the better remembered because it introduced many English-speaking audiophiles to the contention that cables can sound different. The earlier article, published in the March issue, was less earthshaking but still an eyebrow-raiser of considerable force. Simply titled "Amplifier Musicality," it was a response to the word <I>musicality</I> being increasingly used in subjectivist circles to describe the perceived performance of amplifiers and other audio components. It was implicit that musicality was a quality not captured by conventional measurement procedures&mdash;a lack of correlation that Hiraga's article sought to address.

In 1977, just as I was about to take my first faltering steps in hi-fi journalism, the UK's <I>Hi-Fi News</I> ran two articles, translated from French originals by Jean Hiraga, that seemed to me and many others to turn the audio world we knew upside down. The second of them, "Can We Hear Connecting Wires?" was published in the August issue and is the better remembered because it introduced many English-speaking audiophiles to the contention that cables can sound different. The earlier article, published in the March issue, was less earthshaking but still an eyebrow-raiser of considerable force. Simply titled "Amplifier Musicality," it was a response to the word <I>musicality</I> being increasingly used in subjectivist circles to describe the perceived performance of amplifiers and other audio components. It was implicit that musicality was a quality not captured by conventional measurement procedures&mdash;a lack of correlation that Hiraga's article sought to address.