LATEST ADDITIONS

This spring, downloadable digital music from <A HREF="http://www.emigroup.com/">EMI</A&gt; may begin popping up everywhere, if a new arrangement with <A HREF="http://www.supertracks.com/">Supertracks</A&gt; goes as planned. The two companies have created what they believe is a secure system for downloading music to computers, portable players, and to CD burners at kiosks in shopping malls. The news follows by only a couple of weeks an announcement that <A HREF="http://www.warnermusic.com/">Warner Music</A> and EMI will merge their operations under the larger umbrella of AOL Time Warner.

DVD-Audio has kept a low profile since its misfired "launch" late last year (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10620/">previous story</A>), but has popped up again at this week's Audio Engineering Society Convention (<A HREF="http://www.aes.org">AES</A&gt;) in Paris. <A HREF="http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/">Pioneer</A&gt; is demonstrating its latest generation of universal DVD players, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10633/">recently released in Japan</A>, using a new DVD-Audio disc, some of the contents of which were encoded using Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP) technology to enable high-resolution surround sound.

Where would you like to see the next <I>Stereophile</I> HI-FI Show?

High-definition audio is on its way to a DVD player near you. <A HREF="http://www.hdcd.com/">Pacific Microsonics</A> has introduced a new High Definition Compatible Disc chip, the PMD-200, for the next generation of CD and DVD players. The device is a "feature-rich audio IC that provides HDCD processing for both the CD and DVD formats," according to a February 11 company press release.

It's been a rough season for some in the e-commerce crowd, as several consumer-electronics Internet startups find themselves amid changes. Last week, <A HREF="http://www.CyberShop.com">CyberShop.com</A&gt; announced that it will close the e-tailing sites CyberShop.com and electronics.net (created as a joint venture with Tops Appliance City, which is now under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection) and sell these operations' remaining retail assets. At the same time, the company says it will launch an "Internet incubator" through the establishment of <A HREF="http://www.grovestreetventures.com">Grove Street Ventures</A> to attract and develop startup Internet companies.

It would seem almost reasonable to imagine that your next stereo receiver or preamp could have an "intel inside" sticker on the front. Last week, software company <A HREF="http://www.be.com">Be</A&gt; made several announcements that it hopes will not only bring such a future to consumers, but also place itself at the center of the Internet-connected home-entertainment equipment market.

I am biased: On very little evidence, I remain convinced that, in the near future, high-quality music reproduction will be multichannel. While most multichannel demos are still egregiously and aggressively ping-pong, I have attended a few successful demonstrations of discrete multichannel reproduction that have impressed me so deeply that I hunger to have all the music I love transported to me (and me to it) in this way.