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A move by RealNetworks to cut the umbilical cord between Apple's iPod and the company's iTunes Music Store has raised the ire of some execs in Cupertino. The computer pioneer is threatening legal and technical retaliation against its Seattle rival in the wake of a late July launch of a digital music technology called Harmony that enables the iPod to work with downloads from RealNetworks' music store.

From its origins as an obscure off-Broadway novelty act, <A HREF="http://www.blueman.com">Blue Man Group</A> has grown to monster proportions, with authorized spinoffs performing in major cities throughout the world. The group is a permanent attraction in Las Vegas.

The advent of ubiquitous online digital audio file availability, not to mention a growing number of ways to effectively use a computer to organize and store a media library, has prompted futurists to begin declaring this the eve of the "digital den" era.

Back in June of 1992, Lewis Lipnick auditioned one of the era's benchmark products, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/692cello">Cello Palette Preamplifier</A>. LL comments, "The Palette Preamplifier gives the listener a glimpse of what performers experience every day on stage: total immersion <I>in</I> the music."

"One of the worst-kept secrets in audio engineering is that what we hear does not always correlate with what we measure." So wrote the late Richard Heyser 30 years ago, as quoted in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/historical/572"><I>Time Delay Spectrometry</I></A>, a 1987 anthology of his writings (footnote 1). What do we hear? Music heard live consists of a sound pressure that changes according to the logical demands of two things that have no physical reality: the way in which music is structured in time and pitch, and how that structure is ordered by the composer/musician. Heyser, one of the most perceptive audio engineers I've had the privilege to meet, repeatedly emphasized in his essays and papers that the reproduction of music is a multidimensional event.

When American architect Louis Henri Sullivan said "form ever follows function" (footnote 1), he was referring to the transition from the 19th-century view of architecture, driven by aesthetic concerns, to the bold new 20th-century approach of beginning with a building's functions, and letting the design flow from there.

Founded in 1984 by Mark Levinson, the man responsible for the original Mark Levinson products (footnote 1), Cello has slowly become more visible within the high-end audio consumer market, as well as establishing a presence in the recording industry with very high quality microphone preamps, tape electronics, power amplifiers, and equalizers. Taking a holistic approach, Levinson offers Cello systems complete from preamplification and equalization stages through amplification to loudspeakers. He can also set up a complete recording studio for you, including the microphones, microphone preamplifiers, and tape decks. Cello manufactures their own interconnect and speaker cables, cutely called "Cello Strings." Besides marketing his products through high-end dealers, Levinson has established two showrooms, in New York and Los Angeles, dedicated to sales of Cello systems and components (as well as a few selected source components from other manufacturers).