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Reader Paul W. Simoni wonders how content audiophiles are with the high-end audio business.

The month of December was particularly hard on the music world, which lost three of its greatest talents within a few days of each other: Curtis Mayfield, Grover Washington, Jr., and Charles Earland. All were in their late 50s.

It's been a tough year for some of the audiophile record labels, as witnessed by the demise in late November of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10614/">previous story</A>). The shock of MoFi's sudden departure even prompted Kimber Kable's Ray Kimber to fire off an e-mail to everyone within virtual reading range, urging them to buy a few audiophile CDs and LPs right now, before it's too late.

Now that the big odometer has finally turned over, John Atkinson takes a moment to look back at the last 50 years of music reproduction&mdash;the era of high-end audio. Writing in "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/185/">Happy New Audio Millennium</A>," JA offers a little perspective on where audiophiles have traveled this last half century, and where we haven't.

The January 2000 issue of <I>Stereophile</I> is actually the last to be published in 1999, so, at the risk of adding to your millennial fatigue (footnote 1), it is appropriate to devote much of this month's magazine to navel-gazing. Robert Baird, Chip Stern, David Patrick Stearns, and Larry Birnbaum examine the state of recorded music, while in the first of two articles, Markus Sauer questions the beliefs that underpin the audiophile world. And this "As We See It" offers an overview of what used to be called "high fidelity."

Sony has finally released SACD hardware, and DVD-Audio is promised for sometime next year, but none of the first players have digital outputs. Is this a problem for you?

FireWire's prospects got a little hotter last week, as equipment manufacturers <A HREF="http://www.denon.com">Denon Electronics</A> and <A HREF="http://www.onkyous.com">Onkyo</A&gt; announced new license agreements with <A HREF="http://www.digitalharmony.com">Digital Harmony Technologies</A>. The companies say that they have selected Digital Harmony to add standards-based IEEE-1394 (aka FireWire or iLink) interfaces to their product lines, and both companies expect to release Digital Harmony-powered products in 2000, each certified for compatibility with a number of 1394-based products made by other Digital Harmony partners in the US and Europe.