LATEST ADDITIONS

If you own a Sonic Frontiers product, rest assured that parts and service will be available for it well into the foreseeable future. Sonic Frontiers International---the front company created by Paradigm after it acquired the apparently struggling maker of high-end amplifiers, CD players, disc transports, and DACs at the end of August---will honor all valid SF warranties, and will support the existing network of dealers and distributors, according to an announcement made two months ago.

A perpetual problem for audiophiles is finding that disc that not only satisfies the soul, but placates the brain as well. While pondering last week's question about the value of his music collection, reader Randy Meenach wondered how much of it actually sounds great.

On October 1 and 2, engineers, marketing executives, and journalists filled the Hyatt Regency conference center near the San Francisco airport for the DVD-Audio Forum. A long afternoon of technical lectures left us numb. "Therapy for insomniacs" is the only way to describe the seemingly endless Power Point presentations. Microsoft's Power Point seems to be the standard format at all large gatherings, and it's as soporific as hearing a professor read from a textbook.

Day Four at <A HREF="http:www.aes.org/">AES</A&gt;. The crowds were somewhat thinner, but the convention floor was still buzzing, still incredibly busy right up to 4pm, the official break-down time. I spent a couple of hours strolling the floor with <A HREF="http://vacuumtube.com/">Vacuum Tube Valley</A>'s Eric Barbour, who works another side of the thermionic street as an application engineer for Svetlana, the Portola Valley, CA-based importer of Russian-made tubes. Svetlana will soon be making the ubiquitous 12AX7 and other popular tubes in its St. Petersburg factory, he told me. Instability in Russia has hindered production recently, but Eric said all such problems have been solved. He also mentioned that <I>VTV</I> has moved to new offices and should soon be published quarterly. I stood by as he made a sales call at the <A HREF="http://www.mil-media.com/">Millennia Media</A> booth.

Cats vs. dogs, Wile E. Coyote vs. Roadrunner, Spy vs. Spy, Analog vs. Digital. It seems that some battles will never end, and so it is with flux vs. bits in the professional recording industry. The Audio Engineering Society (AES) conventions dazzle showgoers with the latest audio recording and processing gear, mostly digital, and this year's show is no exception. The big buzz heard 'round the hall were higher sampling and quantization rates for future music formats such as DVD-Audio. But off-site, at the nearby ANA hotel (great choice of venue---just add LOG) in downtown San Francisco, key industry heavyweights were holding a meeting to discuss the future of analog recording technologies.

<B>BILLY BRAGG & WILCO: <I>Mermaid Avenue</I></B><BR> Elektra 62204-2 (CD). 1998. Billy Bragg, Wilco, Grant Showbiz, prods.; Jerry Boys, eng.; Nora Guthrie, exec. prod. AAD? TT: 49:42<BR> Performance <B>****?</B><BR> Sonics <B>****</B>

Last week we asked about the cost of your system, but reader Matt H. suggested we ask about the cost of the software to feed it.