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According to the conventional wisdom, companies selling consumer products fall into two categories: those whose sales are "marketing-led" and those whose sales are "product-led." Marketing-led companies tend to sell mature products into a mature market where there are no real differences between competing products—soap powder, mass-market beer, or cigarettes, for example—whereas product-led companies tend to sell new technologies, such as personal computers and high-end hi-fi components. In the audio separates market, conventional wisdom would have a hard time categorizing any individual company: no matter which you choose, it would be simplistic to say that it is either product- or marketing-led. No matter how good the product, without good marketing the manufacturer stands little chance of success; a poor product superbly marketed may make a company successful overnight, but that success will have hit the end stops by the following night.

<I>"DAL firmly believes that a full set of credible measurements, made by qualified engineering staff using state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, can reliably predict the potential of a loudspeaker to accurately reproduce the complex sounds of music."</I>&mdash;Dunlavy Audio Labs

The consumer and retail tracking NPD Group released the results of a study on how people acquired music in 2007. NPD's data show a marketplace undergoing transition&mdash;although, depending on who's parsing the numbers, that could be read either as great news or the end of the world as we know it.

Shaking his head and smiling, he says:

As our summer intern, <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/060107can/">Ariel Bitran</a> proved tireless, helping to make the <i><a href="http://ssl.blueearth.net/primedia/product.php?productid=75&cat=0&page=1… Stereophile Buyer's Guide</a></i> our biggest, most beautiful, and most comprehensive yet. His spirit&#151youthful, enthusiastic, passionate, curious, goofy&#151was stimulating and infectious. It was great to have him around, and I've enjoyed watching as his interest in hi-fi grows.

The Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) aggressive campaign against its customers has most recently relied heavily upon the "making available" argument. The RIAA has argued that the act of making a recording available on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network was a crime, even if nobody actually linked to or downloaded the files. In October 2007, judge <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/news/100807jammie/">Michael J. Davis ruled</A> in <I>Capitol Records v. Thomas</I> that the labels did <I>not</I> need to establish that the songs Ms. Thomas loaded to her KaZaa account were downloaded by others. Ms, Thomas was held liable for $220,000 in penalties.

I spent some time last night listening to Joanna Newsom's <i>Ys</i>. Tangent CDP-50, Tangent AMP-50, Totem Arro loudspeakers. I know and love the Totem speakers, but the Tangents are new to me and, with Joanna Newsom's help and harp perhaps, they sounded better&#151more capable&#151than ever before in my small living room. The sound was fleshy and fast and detailed, whereas (earlier on and with other material) it had been thin and mechanical and uninvolving. I don't know if this has to do with the electronics breaking-in&#151they've now been in the system for about 200 hours&#151or if I was just in a good mood or if Joanna Newsom was responsible. And, right now, I don't care. I'll try to figure it out later.