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The least expensive model in Paradigm's Reference series, the Studio/20 loudspeaker is a rear-ported two-way dynamic bookshelf/satellite design, superficially identical to the powered Active/20 that <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/597/">JA reviewed last November</A>. It features Paradigm's 25mm PAL pure-aluminum dome tweeter in a die-cast heatsink chassis, and a 170mm MLP mica-polymer cone in an AVS die-cast heatsink chassis with a 38mm voice coil. The crossover is third-order, quasi-Butterworth, said to be "phase-coherent." It features high-power ceramic resistors, film capacitors in all signal paths, and both air-core and steel-core inductors.

While the DVD Consortium's Working Group 4 (WG-4) is still working on the 0.9 specification for DVD-Audio, Sony and Philips have been silently carrying on work on their Super Audio CD, the consumer implementation of Sony's DSD. The Sony/Philips disc will have two layers, one carrying normal 44.1kHz, 16-bit CD information (and thus guaranteeing backwards compatibility with existing CD players), the other carrying eight channels in DSD format (two for high-quality stereo, six for surround), plus text and/or graphics.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.intel.com">Intel Corporation</A> announced its membership in the DVD WG-4 Audio Working Group, and its support for the proposed DVD audio specification, as the next steps in bringing next-generation consumer-quality audio to the PC platform.

It is often said that an audiophile is someone who spends half his time feeling unhappy with his system and the other half tweaking it. Is your audio life heaven or hell? After choosing your answer, tell us why you feel that way.

On February 18, <A HREF="http://www.harman.com">Harman International Industries Inc.</A> announced that it had signed two licensing agreements with <A HREF="http://www.nxt.co.uk">New Transducers Limited</A> (NXT) relating to NXT's flat-panel loudspeaker technology.

This week, <A HREF="http://www.burr-brown.com">Burr-Brown</A&gt; Corporation announced the PCM1733, a low-cost, CD-quality audio digital-to-analog converter (DAC) designed for high-volume, mass-market consumer audio applications.

For the second consecutive year, a film using the Nagra Digital Recorder (Nagra-D) as the location sound device has been nominated for an Oscar Award for Best Sound. The film this year is <i>L.A. Confidential</i>, which has received a total of 9 Oscar nominations. The winners will be named at the 70th Annual Academy Awards on March 23, 1998. Last year, <i>The English Patient</i>, which also used the Nagra-D, won the award for Best Sound