LATEST ADDITIONS

Back in 1992, <I>Stereophile</I> got into the business of concert promotion when it booked Canadian pianist Robert Silverman for two evenings of recitals in order to record his performances for a live double CD, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/musicrecordings/315"><I>Concert</I></A&gt; (STPH005-2). We don't believe in rushing to repeat a success, so 15 years later, on February 10, we're promoting another concert, this time featuring <A HREF="http://www.myspace.com/attentionscreen">Attention Screen</A>, the quartet led by <I>Stereophile</I> reviewer and jazz pianist Bob Reina.

Harmonia Mundi, one of the world's leading independent classical music labels, has finally taken the downloading plunge. In an agreement with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), the world's largest distributor of digital music content, announced on January 24 at the annual music conference of the Marche International De l'Edition Musicale (MIDEM) in Cannes, Harmonia Mundi will make available its entire catalogue of early music and contemporary recordings to hundreds of digital music outlets around the world. IODA will also handle digital distribution of HM's catalogue within France, where Harmonia Mundi is headquartered. A separate agreement with Apple's iTunes makes all Harmonia Mundi titles available on that site as well. Also available are the classical, world, and jazz titles from the more than 30 independent labels that Harmonia Mundi distributes in many parts of the world.

Out of all the audiophile phrases, none stirs the hearts of music lovers like "true to the master tape"&mdash;not even "the absolute sound" of the original instruments, which even audio idealists realize is simply too much to demand. But true to the sound of the recorded master tape, now surely that's a goal within reach.

Okay, now things are getting confusing. Hot on the heels of his <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/010107hacked/">announcement</A&gt; that he had hacked HD DVD's Advanced Access Content System (AACS) digital rights management (DRM), muslix64 claimed to have done the same to Blu-Ray's implementation, with the help of anti-DRM crusader Janvitos. You can read the whole saga at the <A HREF="http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120869">Doom9 forum</A> but we'll just give you the juicy bits: "In less than 24 hours, without any Blu-ray equipment, but with the help of Janvitos, I managed to decrypt and play a Blu-ray media file using my known-plaintext attack."

"You are the greatest."

Huckleberry is one smug kitty.