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The music industry's anti-piracy war took a new turn August 16, when a coalition of major record labels filed suit against several large Internet service providers in the hope of blocking access to an offshore free music site.

John Atkinson gets his hands on "the very strange-looking" <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/643/">MBL 111B loudspeaker</A> to determine how "upper-frequency drive-units resembling an array of orange segments" could possibly sound. As JA discovers, thinking different can sometimes be a plus.

Questionable accounting practices were at the heart of the collapse of energy conglomerate Enron and telecommunications giant WorldCom. Apparently, they are also rampant in the music industry&mdash;or at least pervasive enough to command the attention of California state legislators, who have scheduled a second hearing to examine the situation.

What music lovers have suspected for months, and record labels vehemently deny, has apparently been confirmed by <A HREF="http://www.forrester.com">Forrester Research</A>: Piracy is not responsible for the 15% drop in music sales in the past two years. According to a new report from Forrester, "Labels can restore industry growth by making it easier for people to find, copy, and pay for music on their own terms."

I have always had an affection for speakers designed and manufactured by the Canadian conglomerate Audio Products International Corp. (API), which markets speaker designs under the names Mirage, Energy, Sound Dynamics, and Athena. In fact, it was 20 years ago that API created the first budget speaker that caught my attention, the Mirage 350. At the time, the 350 was the only speaker I'd heard that cost less than $300/pair. It sounded open, musical, and detailed without seeming bass-shy. (A larger successor, the 460, was for many years my reference home-theater speaker.) Although I've been impressed with many other API designs I've heard over the years at friends' houses, press events, and hi-fi shows, it had been more than a decade since I'd formally reviewed an API product.

<B>SCHOENBERG: <I>Gurrelieder</I></B><BR> Karita Mattila, soprano; Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Moser, Philip Langridge, tenors; Thomas Quasthoff, bass-baritone, speaker; Gentlemen of the Ernst Senff Choir, Berlin Radio Chorus, Leipzig Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk Chorus; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Rattle<BR> EMI 5 57303 2 (2 CDs). 2002. Stephen Johns, prod.; Graham Kirkby, Andy Beer, Mike Cox, engs. DDD. TT: 110:14<BR> Performance <B>****</B><BR> Sonics <B>****</B></B>

It was almost five years ago that I first spent some serious auditioning time with an omnidirectional two-piece speaker from German manufacturer MBL: the four-way MBL 111. When I reviewed the 111 in the April 1998 Stereophile, I had been extremely impressed with the speaker's stereo imaging, which was superbly stable and well-defined, with images that floated completely free of the speaker positions. The tonal balance was also excellent, with a rich midrange, superbly clean highs, and extended lows. "This Radialstrahler is one of the best tweeters I have experienced," I wrote. In fact, the 111 was let down only by bass frequencies that tended to lag behind the music slightly.