LATEST ADDITIONS

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.

The Comdex trade show, taking place this week in Las Vegas, is flushing out scores of convergence consumer electronics products, in addition to the more traditional computer fare. <A HREF="http://www.apogeeddx.com">Apogee Technology</A>, formerly Apogee Acoustics, a name familiar to many <I>Stereophile</I> readers, is among the dozens of companies announcing technology for the modern consumer electronics marketplace.

Audio equipment prices range from dirt cheap to off-the-chart. How does price affect your perception of products?

Chip Stern writes, "There is something enduring and reassuring in the classic audio verities." The <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/284/">Vandersteen 2Ce Signature loudspeaker</A> is certainly considered one of those timeless classics. But how does a speaker released in its first incarnation more than 20 years ago hold up by today's standards? Stern lends his modern ear to the task and includes notes from Richard Vandersteen himself.

Could this be a record executive's dream come true and the end of the need for watermarking as we know it? <A HREF="http://www.CantaMetrix.com/">CantaMetrix</A&gt; has announced the further development of a new technology, MusicDNA, that the company claims is capable of identifying and tracking the billions of existing as well as new MP3 files on the Internet and providing an exact accounting for the copyright, "thus enabling legal file sharing and linking value-added data to songs."

Sidney Smith, revered audio engineer and a founding father of the modern audio industry, passed away on October 25, 2000 after a battle with cancer. He was 77. Sid, a family man, left a loving wife, Marilyn, three caring daughters, Jennie, Pattie, and Laura, and two grandchildren.