LATEST ADDITIONS

My wife's cousin Steve used to sell antiques. Whenever he would display in his shop's window an impeccable (and expensive) item such as a Colonial pie safe, someone would inevitably walk into the shop and demand to know its price. He'd quote a staggering figure, and the browser would get excited. "Why, I have a piece at home <I>exactly</I> the same as that one! Do you think I could get that sort of money for it?" Steve, having learned his lesson the hard way, would be noncommittal.

Back in my bass-player days in the 1970s, I used to do a regular cabaret gig, providing musical support for sundry British stand-up comic acts. I flashed back on those days when I recently watched <I>Fierce Creatures</I>, the John Cleese/Jamie Lee Curtis/Kevin Kline/Michael Palin vehicle, on satellite. There, playing the part of a zookeeper, was pint-size comedian Ronnie Corbett, whom I backed a few times. (He always bought the band a bottle of Scotch&mdash;you remember stuff like that!) Ronnie used to open his act with the old "They said Thomas Edison was crazy...they said Henry Ford was crazy...they said Albert Einstein was crazy..." gag, which ends with "They said my Uncle Charlie was crazy...actually, my Uncle Charlie <I>was</I> crazy!"

Many audiophiles are also record collectors. There are many ways to add to your collection. Which one works for you?

Is it merely the tip of the iceberg, or a temporary diversion? Hard to say just yet, but a recent report from the <A HREF="http://www.cema.org">Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association</A> (CEMA) suggests that increasing numbers of folks are using their PCs in place of, or in addition to, regular audio systems.

Specialty audio manufacturers did better than expected in 1997, with factory sales as high as $1.4 billion, as reported <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10148/">last week</A>. More figures from the <A HREF="http://www.cema.org">Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association</A> indicate that the High End's good fortune is part of a bigger trend.

Audio amplifiers are now available in power ratings of as low as a few watts. At the other end of the scale are gigawatt amps of 1000W or more. Most fall somewhere in the middle. How much power does a good system really need?

On April 15, <A HREF="http://www.ascap.com/">ASCAP</A&gt; (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), the music performing-rights organization, and <A HREF="http://www.liquidaudio.com">Liquid Audio</A>, a developer of secure online music delivery systems, announced a strategic alliance to protect ownership of music on the Internet. According to a Liquid Audio press release, the initiative encourages, streamlines, and simplifies music-rights licensing and reporting, and will benefit website creators as well as music writers, publishers, and composers.