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While the sudden popularity of MP3 files caught many audio and music industry players by surprise, the budding home media server market is being watched closely from its inception. As defined by <A HREF="http://www.instat.com">In-Stat/MDR</A&gt;, media server products are either PC-based, using an operating system such as Microsoft's Media Center Edition OS, or consumer electronics devices, like advanced set-top boxes, that offer both broadband connectivity and hard-disk-drive&ndash;based storage.

Reader Gerald Neily is wondering where you've heard the best audio system you've ever experienced.

<A HREF="http://www.wilson-benesch.com">Wilson Benesch</A>, distributed in the US by <A HREF="http://www.soundorg.com">The Sound Organisation</A>, is a Sheffield, UK-based engineering firm that made its d&#233;but in the audio world by making a tonearm from carbon fiber. (See Jonathan Scull's report on his visit to the WB factory in December 1996, Vol.19 No.12).

Attending a Consumer Electronics Show is enjoyable, productive, nerve-racking, and exhausting. Too many components, so little time. One has to prioritize to ensure sufficient time to cover everything intended. One needs to avoid certain rooms, such as those with new, unremarkable designs from companies whose designers would love to talk&mdash;for half an hour or more&mdash;with each audio reviewer who makes the mistake of sauntering in. There are also many rooms in that middle region&mdash;rooms on neither the Must Hit nor the Must Avoid list.

I'm never more conservative than when the subject turns to home audio. And at the end of the day, I want little more than to preserve the hobby's finest institutions: Alnico magnets. Parchment cones. Mono. Sonata form. Ballads that actually tell stories. Give me tubes. Give me vinyl. Give me thin-walled hardwood cabinets, obsolete tweeters, and handmade polypropylene woofers. Give me the Spendor BC1.

Ashland, OR cable maker, TARA Labs, was raided by a combined force of federal agents and local police, acting on a warrant issued after investigators found sufficient evidence that the company may have mislabeled some of its products as "Made in USA."

The annual CEDIA show is mostly about home theater and whole-house entertainment systems, but high-performance audio often gets a share of the limelight, too.