LATEST ADDITIONS

A key benefit of working with <I>Stereophile</I> is enjoying the expertise of fellow audio nerds. After the HI-FI Show just held in Los Angeles, Jonathan Scull and Kathleen Benveniste spent a week riding up the California Coast and paid us each a visit.

For the last few months, random postings kept appearing on internet newsgroups and in my e-mail box: "Anybody know what happened to Counterpoint?" At last count there were 10,000 Counterpoint preamps, power amps, and loudspeakers fanned out across the planet, some dating back to 1977, when the company launched its first product: the SA-1 tube preamp, designed by Ed Semanko.

In a dark, smoky office, a desk lamp beams a cone of light onto papers, books, pipes, and notepads. A theoretical physicist hunches over his desk, half-illuminated, visualizing the world inside his equations.

On June 23, <A HREF="http://www.burr-brown.com/">Burr-Brown Corp.</A> announced the PCM1728 digital-to-analog converter (DAC), designed for consumer and professional audio applications.

Following a recent announcement of "diminished expectations" for the near future (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10194/">previous story</A>) and a shakeup of upper management---in which Consumer Group marketing honcho Tom Jacoby was put out to pasture and audio guru Floyd Toole was promoted to senior vice president of acoustic and transducer engineering---<A HREF="http://www.harman.com">Harman International Industries</A> has put the finishing touches on a new 10,000-square-foot audio laboratory. At company headquarters in Northridge, CA, north of Los Angeles, the laboratory includes a 10,000-cubic-foot anechoic chamber for testing and measuring loudspeakers, and a multichannel room with computer-controlled, hydraulically operated platforms for positioning front left, center, and right speakers (a reviewer's dream!).

In a move that is likely to push record labels into the uncharted territory of direct sales, <A HREF="http://www.bmg.com">BMG</A&gt; has announced its intention to add in-house sales to its network of music sites. "BMG will be moving in the fall to its own fulfillment capability because of the demands of consumers," said senior vice president Scott Dinsdale at the Business Online 98 conference in San Francisco last week.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.xingtech.com">Xing Technology Corporation</A> announced its sponsorship of the <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/conference/">First Annual MP3 Summit</A>. In a statement, the company urged music-industry executives to discuss copyright issues, technical standards, and music distribution, and to participate in developing the future of MP3.