LATEST ADDITIONS

Last week, eight consumer-electronics manufacturers announced the formal establishment of the <A HREF="http://www.havi.org">Home Audio Video Interoperability Organization</A> (HAVi) to promote the development of products based on the the HAVi 1.0 final specification, scheduled for completion in December 1999. (An evaluation version of the HAVi 1.0 final spec can be downloaded from the HAVi website.) The HAVi Organization was founded by Grundig, Hitachi, Matsushita, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Thomson, and Toshiba, which have been working together for over two years to develop a specification to permit interoperability among networking digital home entertainment products.

On November 16, Technics and Panasonic presented their <A HREF="http://webevents.broadcast.com/dvdaudio/frames.html">DVD-Audio Q&A Forum</A> to answer questions online about the new high-end audio format, players, and software. After introductions and an opening orientation about DVD-Audio, the first "questions" appeared, canned, as the panelists read "answers" from their notes. Still, some interesting information came to light.

Doug Sahm, of the Grammy-winning Tex-Mex group the Texas Tornados, was found dead in a motel in Taos, New Mexico on Thursday, November 18. He appeared to have died of natural causes, possibly a heart attack, Taos police said. Sahm was 58.

This is my final "Final Word." Although, combined with the announcement of J. Gordon Holt's resignation, this will undoubtedly cause rumors to swirl about Emap Petersen forcing all the old guys out, I assure you that my departure is of my own volition. It's a process that started back in 1997, when John Atkinson and I first talked about selling Stereophile, and for me it reaches its conclusion here.

Last week we asked how much time you spend in the sweet spot. Now tell us how much time you spend listening to music in total.

If all goes according to publicists' wishes, Web surfers will be able to access music previews beginning November 15 without the necessity of using a third-party software player, such as RealNetworks G2, to play downloaded audio files. Streaming-audio provider <A HREF="http://www.audiobase.com/">AudioBase.com</A&gt; has signed deals with several heavyweight corporate sponsors for the launch of its music previews. Participants include Sony Music, K-Tel, and Levi-Strauss. The deals are being announced in conjunction with Internet audio conference <A HREF="http://www.webnoize.com/">Webnoize</A&gt;.

Feeling the need to hook your audio system directly into a website for music files? Last week, <A HREF="http://www.sony.co.jp">Sony Corporation</A> and <A HREF="http://www.sun.com">Sun Microsystems</A> announced plans to further collaborate to provide digital consumer-electronics appliances with direct access to Internet-based content and services. The companies say that the first phase of this cooperation will involve the development of home gateway software, running on appliances such as set-top boxes (connected to a home entertainment system), that will support a combination of home networking and network server technologies.