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Free, as in "no charge": RealTraps reports that it has upgraded ModeCalc, a graphical room-mode prediction software that it offers as a free download (Windows only, 1.3MB) to help people design new listening rooms, or assess the low-frequency response in existing rooms. The company says the new version of ModeCalc offers "several clever features, including a display that better identifies modes that are too close together, and a revised and expanded tutorial in the included Help system."

On October 27, MarketWatch reportedhttp://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?siteid=mktw&guid=%7BBA…; that EMI Music's chairman and CEO, Alain Levy, told an audience, "The CD as it is right now is dead." Speaking at the London Business School, Levy said that 60% of consumers rip CDs into their home computers in order to listen to them on digital music players.

As we reportedhttp://stereophile.com/news/100406hansen/">reported; in early October, Ayre Acoustics' founder and president Charles Hansen was injured in a bicycling accident. Hansen has established a weblog to express his appreciation for the "outpouring of concern from my family, friends, and the audiophile community" and to help keep us all abreast of news of his continuing rehabilitation.

Logitech International, the Swiss computer'n'communications peripherals manufacturer, announced on October 19 that it had acquired Slim Devices, Inc., the home-network-music-systems pioneer that manufactures the Squeezeboxhttp://stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/906slim/">Squeezebox; and Transporterhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/073106transporter/">Transporter;.

On October 19, 2006, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) honored the latest 12 members of the CEA Hall of Fame at its awards dinner at the San Francisco CEA Industry Forum.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that an audiophile in possession of a good hi-fi must be in want of room treatment. The problem, most audiophiles agree, is that said treatment tends to be expensive, big, and fugly. Nucore Technologies, Inc. of Hillsborough, TN and RealTraps of New Milford, CT have some innovative new solutions.

Tipped off by Stereophile reader David Goodwin, I recently visited the San Francisco Airport Museum's beautifully thought-out and executed exhibit The">http://www.sfoarts.org/exhibits/f2/f2-current.html">The History of Audio: The Engineering of Sound. Installed to coincide with the 121st convention of the Audio Engineering Society, held at San Francisco's Moscone Center October 5–8, the exhibit runs through May 2007 in the North Connect Gallery of the airport's Terminal 3 (footnote 1).