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In the early days of digital audio, I remember talking with Dr. Tom Stockham, the developer of the groundbreaking Soundstream system used then by Telarc. As well as using a 50kHz sample rate, the excellent-sounding Soundstream stored its 16-bit data on large drum-shaped Winchester drives connected to a minicomputer. Twenty years later, the advent of ultra-high-density magnetic storage media and fast microprocessor chips has put high-resolution digital audio manipulation and storage within reach of anyone with a modern PC or Mac. And facilitating the transformation of the PC into a high-quality DAW has been a new generation of soundcards, such as the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/280/">Digital Audio Labs CardDeluxe</A> I reviewed in September 2000 and the subject of this review, the German RME Digi96/8 Pro.

Investors have shown an inexplicable willingness to foot the bill for <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com</A>'s $53.4 million settlement with <A HREF="http://www.umusic.com/">Universal Music Group</A>. In the four days following the announcement of a settlement on Tuesday, November 13, the now fully legitimate Internet music site watched its stock surge to four times the value it had only a month before. Shares of MP3.com closed Friday, November 17 at $9.42 each, triple the per-share price on the morning of the announcement. The stock had sunk to a 52-week low of $2.50 per share on October 11.

In his very English way, Sony's then managing director for the UK, Tim Steele, was getting a touch, er, desperate. His oh-so-cultured voice rose a smidgen as he resorted to a direct selling of the benefits of what he was talking about. "Look, you're all sitting on riches," was his fundamental pitch. "You can sell music-lovers your entire back catalog all over again&mdash;at a higher price!"

Over the past two decades, enough advances in the high-end audio industry have trickled down to aspiring audiophiles that we now enjoy a level of high-value, high-resolution performance that would have seemed unattainable even just a few years ago. Still, immersion in a profound musical experience remains an ephemeral goal to potential converts, given the level of expertise that seems necessary to assemble a truly audiophile set of separates.

Have you ever noticed a time of day when your musical enjoyment seems to be consistently at its peak?

Two top executives at <A HREF="http://www.bmg.com/">Bertelsmann Music Group</A> will depart in the wake of the company's recent <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10885/">settlement</A&gt; of its lawsuit against Napster. Citing irreconcilable differences with parent company Bertelsmann AG over company strategy, BMG chief executive Strauss Zelnick and chairman Michael Dornemann announced their resignations Sunday November 5.

For the music industry, copyright and royalty litigation is like an endless war fought on many fronts. During early November, as four of the industry's "Big Five" continued their pursuit of the file-sharing service Napster, a parallel trial in US Federal Court in New York against music archiving-and-accessing site <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com</A&gt; by <A HREF="http://www.umusic.com/">Universal Music Group</A> entered its penalty phase, that segment of the proceeding in which aggrieved plaintiffs seek to extract money from guilty defendants. Other plaintiffs in the trial&mdash;Sony Music Entertainment, BMG, Warner Music, and EMI&mdash;have all settled with the San Diego-based Internet service for an average of $20 million each.