LATEST ADDITIONS

In the race for technological superiority, audio electronics companies in the United Kingdom, with a few notable exceptions, haven't often been first out of the gate. <A HREF="http://www.arcam.co.uk/">Arcam</A&gt;, however, may have already lapped the field with its Alpha 10 DRT (Digital Radio Tuner).

The genesis of this project goes back nearly 17 years, when my wife, Joan, and I moved into a brownstone floorthrough in Brooklyn. As we were about to sign the lease, our soon-to-be landlord said, "Oh, one more thing: your upstairs neighbor is a musician." This did not exactly discourage us from signing the lease, however, and soon I began to see a steady stream of musicians trudging up the stairs outside our apartment: Oliver Lake, Sonny Rollins, Pheeroan akLaff, Bob Moses, Marty Ehrlich, and a whole bunch of other people I was reading about in the jazz press. Just who was this guy?

All right, 'fess up. Have you ever bought pirated music? Sometimes it's the only way to get what you want.

Fans of Macintosh computers and Betamax videotape are fond of pointing out that in the free market, the best technologies don't necessarily win. That scenario may be playing out again in the case of <A HREF="http://www.vqf.com/">VQF</A&gt;, a digital audio transfer and storage technology originally developed several years ago by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.

Singer Dusty Springfield died at her home near Oxford, England last Tuesday, March 2, a few weeks before what would have been her 60th birthday and only one day before she was to have appeared at Buckingham Palace to be honored by Queen Elizabeth. The cause was breast cancer.

Ethics and high-end audio have always been a tangled web---especially when it comes to deciding whether to purchase equipment from a helpful local dealer or trying to find the best price possible. In the web reprint of February 1999's "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//thinkpieces/98/">The Final Word</A>," <I>Stereophile</I>'s publisher emeritus, Larry Archibald, examines a recent high-end purchase of his own to shed a little light on the dilemma faced by the audiophile grinding for a great deal. Also included are some choice reader responses.

I first saw and heard SimAudio's Moon amp and preamp at WCES two years back, and something about their aesthetics appealed to me: Canadian ruggedness coupled with a decidedly French panache. I remember that those attributes also characterized the demo's sound, although I can't recall the speakers or the sources involved. At succeeding shows, it gradually dawned on me that the Moon components were the fixed elements in a succession of impressive demos.