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Gunther Frohnh&#246;fer, Acoustic Signature turntable designer and company owner, informed me last week that the business relationship between his company and Ballmann, the manufacturer of the German Behold line of electronics, which includes a headshell-mounted 768kHz/24-bit A/D converter (see my "Analog Corner" column in the forthcoming April 2005 issue of <I>Stereophile</I>), has been severed. Frohnh&#246;fer has relinquished his position as Ballmann's general manager. "Doing both my own product and the Behold electronics line was too much for one person to handle," he told me. Instead, Frohnh&#246;fer will focus on his core turntable business, while Mr. Ballmann will continue developing, manufacturing, and marketing his electronics line.

People have been making recordings for more than a century. What is the oldest recording you own that you still find time to listen to?

I have always been a dyed-in-the-wool vinyl fan, committed to the superiority of analog over current 44kHz/16-bit CD technology. Nevertheless, I have been surprised at how greatly the sound of CD has improved over the past 10 years. By 1994, digital had gotten much closer to analog than I had ever expected, which was a good thing, as 1994 also saw the disappearance of the LP as a medium for obtaining new releases of mainstream recordings. But over the last two years, I've noticed some interesting phenomena: More turntables, tonearms, and cartridges started to become available, at least in the high-end arena. Audiophiles and, to a lesser extent, segments of the general music-loving public, began clamoring for new vinyl releases. Specialty labels, such as Classic Records and Acoustic Sounds, started to reissue premium vinyl releases of classical, jazz, and pop classics at reasonable prices. And major labels again began to offer vinyl versions of major pop releases.

Like many audiophiles, I am finding myself listening to more and more music sitting in front of my computer. My experience with the little plastic-box horrors sold as "computer speakers" has not been positive, however, with even models from Altec Lansing and Cambridge SoundWorks scoring an "F." For a long time, therefore, I used a pair of RadioShack Optimus LX5s, stuck at the far ends of my desk because their unshielded drivers messed with the colors on my monitor. I tried and liked a pair of the A/V version of PSB's best-selling $249/pair <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/241">Alpha</A&gt;. Then Jonathan Scull recommended I try a pair of the diminutive Elans from Utah-based Evett & Shaw, with which he had been impressed at the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show.

Home Entertainment 2004 West in San Francisco might have been called off last November, but I wasn't about to let that stop me from taking a trip to visit the wine country&mdash;except that the wine country in question turned out to be the wine country of Southern New England.

ListenUp NHT: NHT's 75W M-00 powered two-way studio monitor has long been an audiophile favorite for the title of "best computer loudspeaker"&mdash;not that the competition has been all that fierce. The Benicia, CA&ndash;based loudspeaker manufacturer recognized that the powered monitor, initially marketed direct to recording engineers and in-home studio owners, was selling beyond its target audience and repositioned it as part of its PC Hi-Fi line. When Walt Stinson, co-founder of Colorado-based Audio/Video chain ListenUp discovered the M-00s when he was searching for something to pair with his portable player, he was so taken with their performance that he called ListenUp's marketing manager, Phil Murray, and told him that the chain had to carry them, because they were "simply the best multimedia speakers, bar none."

Broadcast flag on trial: On February 22, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments in a lawsuit brought against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding its plans to institute the broadcast flag rule. The "broadcast flag" is essentially encryption embedded in digital television signals that would not permit recording devices such as personal video recorders, iPods, cellular phones, or VCRs to record over-the-air digital transmissions without the permission of the broadcaster. The suit, sponsored by diverse organizations including the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, and the American Library Association, charges that the FCC decision to require the broadcast flag "exceeds its authority."