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How many of you out there know what a Nuvistor is? Michael Fremer takes a look at this unique device and its application in the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/205/">Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300 power amplifier</A>. "Enclosing its vacuum in metal rather than glass, the Nuvistor was designed as a long-lived, highly linear device with low heat, low microphony, and low noise&mdash;all of which it needed to have any hope of competing in the brave new solid-state world emerging when RCA introduced it in the 1960s." Musical Fidelity decided to use the Nuvistor in a limited-run amplifier, and therein lies an interesting tale, which Michael skillfully uncovers.

An Internet startup being organized by Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood and auctioneer Ted Owen will offer John Lennon's 30-year-old Steinway piano for auction some time in July. The piano is now on display in The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool and will remain there until October 9, which would have been Lennon's 60th birthday.

In a move that could save exhibitors a considerable amount of money, the 2001 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is being rescheduled for a day earlier than previously announced. Originally planned to run from Sunday, January 7 through Wednesday, January 10, 2001, the show will now begin on Saturday, January 6 and run through Tuesday, January 9.

A slump in the music business is officially over. Sales of recorded music in the United States last year totaled $14.6 billion, an all-time high. The figure is a 6.3% increase from 1998's total of $13.7 billion, the previous record, according to a recent <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/stats/press/021800.htm">report</A&gt; from the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industries Association of America</A> (RIAA).

In a statement that may have far-reaching ramifications for the online digital music-distribution business, last week <A HREF="http://www.sonic.com">Sonic Solutions</A> and <A HREF="http://www.sony.co.jp">Sony</A&gt; announced at the Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES) in Paris that they would collaborate to integrate Sony's ATRAC3 (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding 3) into iMaster, Sonic's suite of tools for the preparation of compressed audio for Internet distribution.

<B>KEITH JARRETT: <I>The Melody at Night, With You</I></B><BR> Keith Jarrett, piano<BR> ECM 1675 (CD). 1999. Keith Jarrett, prod., eng.; Manfred Eicher, prod. DDD. TT: 55:18<BR> Performance <B>****1/2</B><BR> Sonics <B>****?</B>

February 2000&mdash;We are now comfortably past all the millennial hype, which, by New Year's Eve, really <I>had</I> risen to a nauseating fever pitch. But it's hard not to look back to the times, the places, and, most of all, to the faces and personalities that populated the last hundred years.