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<A HREF="http://www.sharp-usa.com">Sharp Electronics</A> has come a long way from the household appliances and modest home entertainment products it has long been famous for. (The company's name derives from its first product, a retracting pencil.) Sharp is making a serious, prolonged push into upscale audio and video, as evidenced by the array of new models on display at a dealer and media conference held in late August at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, a hotel/golf resort north of San Diego.

It will probably be years before we can determine the actual effects that Napster and other online file-trading networks have had on the music business. Conflicting evidence suggests that swapping music either <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11418/">increases</A&gt; or <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11387/">reduces</A&gt; CD sales.

All of us at <I>Stereophile</I> were saddened to learn of the death of mastering engineer Denny Purcell, whose body was found Thursday, August 22 in the offices of his Georgetown Masters studio in Nashville. He was 51.

<I>The fundamental object of the invention is to provide...the listener a realistic impression that the intelligence is being communicated to him over two acoustic paths in the same manner as he experiences in listening to everyday acoustic intercourse....</I>&mdash;Blumlein, <I>et al</I>, British Patent #394,325, issued June 14, 1933</B>

Industry representatives for both SACD and DVD-Audio claim they are not in a format war with each other. Do you disagree with them?

The music industry's anti-piracy war took a new turn August 16, when a coalition of major record labels filed suit against several large Internet service providers in the hope of blocking access to an offshore free music site.

John Atkinson gets his hands on "the very strange-looking" <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/643/">MBL 111B loudspeaker</A> to determine how "upper-frequency drive-units resembling an array of orange segments" could possibly sound. As JA discovers, thinking different can sometimes be a plus.