LATEST ADDITIONS

At the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show in January—see the report in this issue—Sony and Philips held an SACD Event at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. There were trippy lights. There were the Grand Pooh-Bahs of Sony, Philips, and the record labels. There was loud multichannel Big Brother and the Holding Company. And there was Sony's main SACD man in the US, David Kawakami, supplying the pep talk.

Alleged unauthorized copying of compact discs will cost Technicolor, Inc. approximately $2.3 million. On March 26, the Southern California disc replicator agreed to settle a <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11309/">case</A&gt; brought against it last year by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in which the RIAA charged that workers at one of Technicolor's disc plants had made and distributed batches of illegal copies. The total of the settlement was less than 10% of the amount originally sought by the RIAA.

Job cutbacks are one inevitable result of sustained sales declines. In late March, the ailing music industry began to shed excess workers in an effort to reach profitability, with <A HREF="http://www.sonymusic.com">Sony Music</A> and <A HREF="http://www.bmg.com">Bertelsmann Music Group</A> announcing significant reductions in their workforces.

The nascent satellite radio industry has entered a critical phase, with both <A HREF="http://www.xmradio.com">XM Radio</A> and <A HREF="http://www.siriusradio.com">Sirius Satellite Radio</A> posting losses for the fourth quarter. Combined, the two companies have yet to sign up a half-million subscribers.

It's no secret that the music industry has added watermarking to its arsenal in an effort to restrict how audio content is used. With SACD, DVD-Audio, and <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/11604/">now CD</A>, audio watermarking has been used mainly for digitally stored content. But the music business also has problems with live concert bootlegs as well as bootlegs surfacing after special broadcast events.

Both XM and Sirius satellite radio systems have recently announced they have enough financing to keep afloat for another year or so. Reader Stephen M. Rose wants to know if you would be interested in digital satellite radio if audiophile-grade receivers hit the market?

This week's Soapbox finds reader Mark Gdovin lamenting the lack of tone controls on modern audiophile preamps. Do you look for tone controls when you purchase a preamp?