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Creek Audio founder/designer/co-owner Michael Creek is a quiet, friendly, unassuming man. Unlike some ego-driven electronics designers who tout their products very loudly from their pulpits, Michael Creek has been quietly designing high-quality, musical, and affordable integrated amps in black-metal boxes for nearly 20 years. His target market is the passionate music-lover who wants something a notch above an entry-level NAD or Rotel receiver, but whose bank manager would frown on splurging on electronic separates.

While walking home from the office the other day I passed a gleaming, perfectly detailed Harley-Davidson, lightly customized, as many are these days. I didn't stop and drool, but I couldn't unsnap my eyes from it. As I drew parallel to that hawg, a Ricky Martin look-alike threw his leg over the saddle and thumbed the starter. No, you don't have to be a tattooed, beer-gutted redneck anymore to rear up and <I>slam</I> down on a kick-starter of one of those beasts. These days, it's all done with the push of a button. Dude.

From the days of Les Paul's chum Mary Ford, through Amanda McBroom and Jennifer Warnes, right up to Patricia Barber, audiophiles have been fascinated, and sometimes obsessed, with female vocals. I nominate to membership in that select sorority another Patricia, in this case O'Callaghan, whose third CD has just been released worldwide by her new label, Teldec.

Contrary to rumors circulating on the Internet, audiophile recording label <A HREF="http://www.delosmus.com/">Delos International</A> is not abandoning the DVD-Audio format. A quick call to the Hollywood, CA&ndash;based company cleared up some confusion created when a few people noticed that "DVD-A" doesn't appear anywhere on the Delos homepage.

One of the dirty little secrets of the recording business is that some of its most precious assets are slowly self-destructing. In one example, a popular mastering tape supplied by Ampex to recording studios during the '70s and early '80s has been found to prematurely shed its oxide coating at an alarming rate due to poor quality control of the binding agents that hold the magnetic particles to the Mylar.

A few weeks ago, we ran an <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10957/">item</A&gt; concerning drummer Billy Higgins' declining health and rapidly growing medical expenses. Apparently, his fans have come through generously, because we just received the following:

Who says classical music is having trouble finding a contemporary audience? According to the latest <A HREF="http://www.arbitron.com/">Arbitron</A&gt; webcast ratings, for December, 2000, classical music and internet-only webcaster <A HREF="http://www.beethoven.com">Beethoven.com</A&gt; ranked number one with the most aggregate tuning hours (ATH) for the month. ATH describes the sum total of all hours that listeners tune to a given channel.