LATEST ADDITIONS

Because online music retailers like <A HREF="http://www.cdnow.com">CDNow</A&gt; and <A HREF="http://www.Amazon.com">Amazon.com</A&gt; have likely taken a bite out of record-club sales, last week Internet company <A HREF="http://www.aol.com">America Online</A> and direct music marketer <A HREF="http://www.columbiahouse.com">Columbia House</A> announced a marketing agreement for both online and offline advertising and promotions, including product bundling, direct-mail initiatives, and co-marketing and advertising campaigns. Under the multi-year agreement, Columbia House, with more than 13 million members, will promote its music, video, and DVD clubs on AOL's Shopping Channel, as well as on AOL.com, CompuServe, Digital City, and Entertainment Asylum.

When it comes to delivering audio/video programming to the home, there's no substitute for bandwidth. Typically measured in megahertz (MHz) for analog signals or megabits per second (Mbps) for digital datastreams, the amount of bandwidth your system can access determines how much programming you can receive and at what level of quality.

It was the weirdest orchestral balance I'd ever heard. The gentle woodwind chords that begin Mendelssohn's incidental music to <I>A Midsummer Night's Dream</I> were as loud as the climactic "Wedding March" that ends the piece. The radio broadcast was obviously being compressed to hell. Yet, sitting at the wheel of the rented Vauxhall Vectra I was driving down to Cornwall for an old friend's surprise 50th birthday party, I was actually glad for the compression. Had Classic FM broadcast the Mendelssohn with its true dynamic range intact, the quiet passages would have been irretrievably buried in the road noise and the loud passages would have had me lunging for the volume control, to the possible danger of those sharing England's congested A303 trunk road with me.

Most audiophiles' record collections include LPs <I>and</I> CDs, but one format invariably is played more than the other. In yours, which one is it, and by how much?

After a particularly tough year, Carver Corporation announced last week that it has executed an agreement with founder Bob Carver, who had sold his interest in the company and then started up privately held Sunfire Corporation (<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10254/">see previous story</A>). The new agreement places Sunfire in charge of the development, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution, under the Carver brand name, of a new line of home and car products that will incorporate "new" technologies. The agreement also establishes a new manufacturer's representative and independent dealer network to rebuild Carver Corporation, and for Bob Carver to assume full operational control of the company.

Online readers rejoice: <I>Stereophile</I> is posting the first of what we hope will be many equipment reviews in our Archives database. First up is the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/86/">Linn Sondek CD12 CD player</A> (recently reviewed in <I>Stereophile</I>), along with a review of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/85/">Linn AV 51 System</A> (from the February 1999 issue of <I>Stereophile Guide to Home Theater</I>).

Ethics is a subject always more easily discussed than practiced. There's been a lot of discussion recently about the ethics of retailing&mdash;or, more accurately, the ethics of <I>buying</I> retail.