LATEST ADDITIONS

The practice of "Transshipping"---selling a product outside one's designated territory---is widespread in the audio industry. It's commonplace for dealers to sell not only to walk-in customers, but also over the telephone or Internet to customers in other dealers' territories, usually at discounted prices. While not problematic on a small scale, the practice favors large-volume dealers over smaller ones, and is almost always a violation of a dealer's agreement with a manufacturer.

Hundreds of manufacturers will be demonstrating state-of-the-art audio products at <A HREF="http://www.hifishow.com">HI-FI '98</A>---some of which have never before been seen by the public. We're running several announcements each week leading up to the Show to give you a taste of what to expect. Here's the fourth assortment:

Software giant <A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com">Microsoft Corporation</A> has entered the audio market with a satellite-and-subwoofer speaker system for use with personal computers. The Digital Sound System 80 made its debut at this year's Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3), held May 28-30 in Atlanta's World Congress Center. The system was designed in conjunction with <A HREF="http://www.philips.com">Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands</A>, one of the world's largest electronics companies.

On May 26, <A HREF="http://www.N2K.com"&gt; N2K</A>'s <A HREF="http://www.JazzCentralStation.com"&gt; JazzCentralStation </A> launched the first officially sanctioned Miles Davis StarSite, <A HREF="http://www.MilesDavis.com"&gt; MilesDavis.com</A>. An all-star musical and multimedia tribute was held that evening at New York City's Birdland, hosted by Dr. Billy Taylor and recorded by Phil Ramone and Michael Cuscuna for a September release on N2K Encoded Music. May 26 would have been Davis' 72nd birthday.

The high-end audio business has been around for less than 40 years, with new generations signing on each year. When did you join?

In an effort to make computers more useful as audio systems, <A HREF="http://www.musicmatch.com">MusicMatch</A&gt; and <A HREF="http://www.xingtech.com/">Xing Technology</A> recently announced MusicMatch Jukebox, a digital audio management software program for the consumer market.

This past week, <A HREF="http://www.avacademy.com/">The Academy Advancing High Performance Audio & Video</A> (AAHPAV) released its 1998 Golden Note Awards Nominations.