LATEST ADDITIONS

Forget the Serial Copy Management System, music fans. <A HREF="http://www.macrovision.com/"&gt; Macrovision Corporation</A> is taking CD copy prevention to the next level. The folks who made it impossible to loop your DVD player through your VCR want to make sure you can't copy new music either. On February 27, Sunnyvale, CA-based Macrovision announced that it will begin beta-testing its "Safeaudio Toolkit," a CD-audio copy-protection technology. One major record label has already completed its own testing, according to an official statement. Macrovision announced its <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10623/">intention</A&gt; to go forward with the technology late last year.

The word on Bel Canto's upsampling DAC was already out when I visited their room at the 2000 Consumer Electronics Show looking to get one of the first samples. But despite my protestations, all Bel Canto's Mike McCormick wanted to talk about was their company's new digital amp, the eVo 200.2. Sure, there's a future out there in which all sources will be digital and D/A conversion will occur in the speaker (or later?). But today, I see no practical advantage in a digital amplifier with only an analog input. It may be more efficient and it may be new technology, but the amplifier has got to stand on the same footing as any analog design and justify its existence by the way it sounds. The eVo did make a good case for itself at the demo, so I signed up to get one for review.

Keith Herron plopped himself down in my listening chair and smiled, clearly pleased with the sound of my system now that his M150 monoblock power amplifiers had been substituted for my <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/205/">Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300</A>. He began to tell me why.

Reader Bard-Alan Finlan has seen the hype about digital satellite radio from XM and Sirius. He'd like to know what you're really thinking about the new format.

For the first time in five years, New York City will play host to the largest hi-fi and home theater show in the US. Home Entertainment 2001 promises to be the largest and most comprehensive such event to date when it takes place this spring at the Hilton New York & Towers Hotel on May 11-13, 2001.

Barry Willis remembers well the British invasion: "Really Big Hi-Fi came to live with me for a couple of months this past spring in the form of a pair of <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/317/">Tannoy Churchill</A> loudspeakers." After a challenging delivery, Willis wrestles the Tannoys into place and files his report. Victory at last?

Although it sounds like a disease resulting from poor dental hygiene, Bluetooth is a recently established wireless standard aimed at small-form&ndash;factor, low-cost, short-range radio links between mobile PCs, mobile phones, and other electronic devices such as speaker systems. Although there were a few bumps in the road as the standard became established, Cahners In-Stat Group predicts that 1.4 billion Bluetooth-based devices will be shipping annually by 2005.