LATEST ADDITIONS

It's been a while since we talked about our amplifiers (23 months in fact). So we'd like to know what you are using now and why you like it.

<A HREF="http://www.emigroup.com">EMI Group PLC</A> has gotten serious about surviving in a depressed market. In the wake of a disastrous multimillion-dollar <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11265/">payout</A&gt; to pop singer Mariah Carey, the UK music label has announced sweeping cutbacks in its workforce&mdash;including many American executives&mdash;and in its roster of artists.

"Even right out of the box, it's obvious that the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/540/">Wadia Digital 861 CD player</A> is something special," writes Brian Damkroger in this month's issue. "Its heft and finish are beyond the usual high-end standards." But how about the sound?

<IMG SRC="/images/newsart/2002monshow.1.jpg" WIDTH=150 HEIGHT=100 HSPACE=6 VSPACE=4 BORDER=0 ALIGN=RIGHT>Is it the low exhibitor rates? The excuse to visit Montreal, perhaps North America's most cosmopolitan city? The efficiency and charm of organizer Marie-Christine Prin and her assistants? Whatever the reason(s), Montreal's <I>Festival Son & Image</I> has become a real success story, attracting an ever-increasing array of exhibitors and audiophiles from far and wide. Last year, the Festival spilled over from the downtown Delta Hotel to the Four Points Sheraton across the street; this year, there were exhibits in the Holiday Inn next door as well.

If Senator "Fritz" Hollings has his way, coming generations of electronic products will monitor their users' behavior and report possible copyright violations to some governmental regulatory agency. That's one of the more ominous provisions in Hollings' Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), introduced for consideration by the US Senate the third week of March. The bill goes far beyond the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998.

When I read John Atkinson's reviews of the Digital Audio Labs CardDeluxe (Vol.23 No.9) and RME Digi96/8 Pro (Vol.23 No.11 and Vol.24 No.1), I realized that soundcard technology had matured far faster than I had been aware. For about the price of a mainstream CD player, anyone with a reasonably powerful computer could add multitrack digital recording technology to his bag of tricks.

Considering that so many people carped about the lack of good music and the overall poor recording quality in the last couple of Votes, I think there should be a poll asking, 'What's your favorite audiophile record label?' says reader Travis Cunningham. He'd also like to hear what people think about the sound each label achieves.