LATEST ADDITIONS

TrueSound Lounge: Headphone giant <A HREF="www.sennheiserusa.com">Sennheiser</A&gt; has opened an online music destination, the Sennheiser <A HREF="http://www.truesoundlounge.com">"TrueSound
Lounge</A>", providing web-surfers an entertaining selection of new music from
company-supported emerging artists like Sugarcult and Jody Whitesides. The site also provides "fun, quick-witted web-video shorts from top commercial filmmakers and producers, fruits of the Sennheiser Invitational Film Project," and "concise info on Sennheiser's unequalled selection of personal listening products," according to a recent announcement.

The <A HREF="http://www.riaa.org">RIAA</A&gt; foresees that digital audio broadcasting (DAB) will represent a fundamental change in the radio industry. "It is not just a means of offering higher quality broadcast sound. DAB could transform radio into a vehicle for the distribution of huge amounts of information in digital form, including recorded music," says the trade organization. As a result, the group is supporting regulatory restraints on digital audio broadcasting (DAB) in reaction to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Notice of Inquiry (NOI) regarding DAB content control.

The proposed merger of the music divisions of Sony Corporation and Bertelsmann AG may win approval from European Union regulators, according to reports from Brussels on June 18.

In his review of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/604velodyne">Velodyne Digital Drive DD-18 powered subwoofer</A>, Larry Greenhill comments, "When I've tested other 'breakthrough' subwoofers, I've been disappointed. All the convenient fine-tuning in the world won't matter if I end up with the same nasty old room modes and woofer bloat." But as LG discovers, the DD-18 is indeed different.

An argument could be made that most speakers are designed to sound best with their grilles intact, while others might reason that anything in front of a tweeter has got to be bad. Reader Gerald Neily wants to know if you prefer to listen with your speaker grilles on or off.

A grainy film is said to exist that proves the viability of a mechanical antigravity device. The inventor, a native of Syracuse, New York named Harry W. Bull (footnote 1) placed his so-called "bootstrap machine" on a bathroom scale, focused a borrowed home movie camera on the dial, powered up the machine, and watched as the numbers spun backward. This event, and the development work that led to it, were the basis for a series of articles&mdash;and a subsequent exchange of heated letters&mdash;in <I>Popular Science</I> magazine. The year was 1935.

When PR guy Adam Sohmer first told me about the Fosgate Audionics FAP V1, I thought that the impressive-looking device would be the first all-tube preamp-processor&mdash;heck, the first tube <I>anything</I>&mdash;in my multichannel system. Then I looked closer at the user's manual I'd downloaded from Fosgate's website. Hmmm. No Dolby Digital, no DTS&mdash;just Dolby Pro Logic. Of course, the FAP V1 is Jim Fosgate's signature expression of Dolby Pro Logic, and I guess that counts for something. But the more I thought about it, the more interesting a prospect the FAP V1 seemed.