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Despite my 26 years in audio journalism, the amount of stuff I need to know seems to increase faster than I can cope with it. Thus it didn't come as too much of a surprise for me to learn that speaker manufacturer Canton, the Teutonic equivalent of England's B&W, a) was 30 years old in 2002, and b) claims the dominant market share of the German market. Yes, I'd been peripherally aware of Canton through the years, but for various reasons had never auditioned any of their models. I was amenable, therefore, when Canton USA's Paul Madsen suggested to me last May, at Home Entertainment 2002 in New York City, that I review their flagship speaker.

Sony announced several new titles for SACD release, including titles by Bob Dylan, The Police, and Pink Floyd, at the recent CES. What titles would you pick for the high-rez treatment?

Robert Deutsch tackles the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/749/">Balanced Audio Technology VK-40 preamplifier</A>, noting "Few topics will get audiophiles into an argument more readily than a discussion of the relative merits of tubed and solid-state equipment."

Back to the Alexis Park for a press conference with Classic Records, which has decided to release its first DVD-Audio disc around February 15. Classic was one of the very first labels to take advantage of the original DVD specification's ability to hold a 24/96 two-channel audio track, and it started releasing DAD discs exactly five years ago. The company's first DVD-A release will be the Vanguard title <I>Songs of the Auvergne</I>, which will feature a 24/192 two-channel DVD-A track and 24/96 two-channel DVD-V track.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) officially opened today and we spent our time at the Alexis Park noticing even more exhibitors than last year. On hand were plenty of new products, companies, and high-rez software demos. Multichannel demos were in heard in several rooms&mdash;all to good effect.

Last week's poll revealed a wide variety of musical meetings. But if you could choose to meet any musician or composer, no matter when he or she lived, who would it be? Why would that person be your choice?

In a pre&ndash;Consumer Electronics Show announcement, <A HREF="http://www.ti.com">Texas Instruments</A> says it has integrated its FireWire (IEEE1394), multichannel audio digital signal processor (DSP), and digital amplifier technologies in a single board to demonstrate an all-digital audio system from source to speaker.