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The oldest verified surviving recording is an 1878 tin cylinder of a talking clock (you can hear it at <A HREF="http://tinfoil.com/cm-0101.htm">tinfoil.com/cm-0101.htm</A&gt;). There's just one problem, however; the recording's surface noise is so pronounced that you can barely hear the featured attraction. Chalk it up to age, imperfect recording media, poor storage, or even to the ravages of mold, but the facts remain the same&mdash;we're in danger of losing our audio patrimony: the hundreds of thousands of historical recordings from the dawn of recording.

On July 11, Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas downloaded the 100 millionth song purchased from Apple's <A HREF="http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/">iTunes music store</A>. Britten spent 99&#162; for "Somersault (Dangermouse remix)" by Zero 7 and, in exchange, won a 17" PowerBook, a 40GB iPod, and a gift certificate entitling him to 10,000 iTunes songs (the approximate capacity of a 40Gb iPod). As Apple counted down to 100 million, it also gave "special 20GB iPods" to the consumers who downloaded each 100,000th song between 95 million and 100 million.

Since it has been five years since the debut of SACD, one might think that the debate as to where it fits within the audiophile food chain would have been put to rest. But as with most things audio, reality conspires to make rational comparisons between formats tough. One is never sure if two releases on different formats have been rendered from the same source, or, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11649/">as we discovered</A> with the recent <I>Dark Side of the Moon</I> hybrid SACD, from completely different masters.

Tube fans might want to get their passports in order. We've received word that the European Triode Festival 2004 (ETF.04) will take place in Langenargen, Germany in December. The festival, which describes itself as "a gathering of tube audio hobbyists and professionals," says it will host participants from all over the world.

Reader Gerald Neily is curious about the control issues our readers have. He would like to know if you use a remote with your audio system, and if so, how do you use it?

Consider the plight of solid-state muscle amps. Often derided as brutes lacking sophistication or subtlety, particularly by the SET set (<I>ie</I>, fans of single-ended triodes), these powerhouses are taken for granted and often, like Rodney Dangerfield, they get no respect. And once upon a time, the stereotypes were true. Every veteran audiophile has at some time heard an immensely powerful transistor amp that had the soft sonic allure of a sheet of sandpaper, a lumbering oaf of a component with nothing whatsoever to recommend it save for a bulging set of mighty moose muscles.

"Commoditization leads to the death of a specialty industry!" Hearing this at what I'd anticipated would be a sleep-inducing seminar on marketing, I pricked up my ears. The speaker was management guru Tom Peters, author of the best-selling <I>In Search of Excellence</I> and <I>The Pursuit of WOW!</I>. "Once your product is commoditized, all that is left to compete on is price," Peters continued, as I frantically scrawled down his comments, "and a small company will <I>always</I> lose to the big guns on price!"