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E<I>ditor's Note: There is a large contingent of </I>Stereophile<I> readers who design and build their own equipment&mdash;the DIY (do it yourself) crowd. Herv&#233; Del&#233;traz from Switzerland has been e-mailing us photos and stories over the last year about his own ambitious DIY amplifier design, so we asked him if he'd be willing to share a chronicle of his progress, starting from the beginning. This is the first in a six-part series written by Mr. Del&#233;traz.</I>

Late August news bites: <A HREF="http://www.ti.com/">Texas Instruments</A> announced August 25 the completion of its acquisition of chipmaker <A HREF="http://www.burr-brown.com/">Burr-Brown Corporation</A> in a stock swap. Burr-Brown is highly regarded in the audio industry for its low-noise, high-speed digital/analog converters and digital signal-processing (DSP) ICs. The company also makes ultra-high-quality analog components, a segment of the semiconductor industry expected to grow by 25% in the coming year, according to industry analyst Dataquest.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.bmgentertainment.com/">BMG Entertainment</A>, the music and entertainment division of <A HREF="http://www.bertelsmann.de/">Bertelsmann AG</A>, revealed that it will join several other major labels (see previous stories <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10798/">EMI</A&gt; and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10814/">Universal</A&gt;) by bringing its own digital downloads to the Internet this September. The company says that it will start with approximately 50 songs and 50 complete albums, to be made available via several retail Web outlets at prices ranging from $1.98 to $3.49 per song and from $9.98 to $16.98 per album.

The <A HREF="http://www.sdmi.org/">Secure Digital Music Initiative</A> (SDMI) will soon move into Phase II of its evaluation of digital audio watermarking, following listening tests conducted in early July at Sony's Whitfield Street Studios in London and administered by Sony VP of engineering Malcolm Davidson. A soon-to-be-published report from Paul Jessop of the <A HREF="http://www.ifpi.org/">International Federation of Phonograph Industries</A> reveals that the participants in the tests&mdash;almost all of them audio-industry professionals or journalists&mdash;averaged just slightly better than 50% in their abilities to detect the watermarks.

In an effort to move their businesses into cyberspace, record labels and audio content distributors are still experimenting with their online formulas. Key to the new economic models for selling music over the Net is this question: Would you rather pay a monthly subscription fee to download music, or pay for music track by track? According to market researcher <A HREF="http://gartner11.gartnerweb.com/public/static/home/home.html">Gartner Group</A>, sites that plan to sell music via the subscription model should seriously reconsider.

Audiophiles aren't taking to the streets just yet, but John Atkinson is more than a little riled about the proposed watermarking of SACD and DVD-Audio recordings. In this month's "As We See It," "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/257/">Watermarking: the Devil's Work!</A>," JA exhorts the audiophile masses to rise up in protest.

E-wisdom holds that one of the big advantages about retailing on the Internet is that, once a comany is online, the entire world of consumers is only a few mouse clicks away. This concept holds up much better in theory than in practice. Language barriers, shipping costs, and import/export red tape (such as agreements controlling which countries a retailer can even sell a product line to) have all made the reality less than ideal for e-merchants.