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Sony may be pretending that DVD-Audio doesn't exist, and Panasonic may be in denial about SACD, but a new chip from Texas">http://www.ti.com">Texas Instruments just might help bring the rival formats a little closer together in consumer living rooms and professional recording studios alike.

A billion-dollar loss for the parent company may be a big gain for performers under contract to Warner">http://www.wmg.com/">Warner Music Group, who will benefit from cross-promotional efforts aimed at millions of America">http://www.aol.com/">America Online subscribers beginning this month.

Last week, American">http://www.atcsd.com">American Technology Corp. (ATC) announced that three additional patents on its loudspeaker technologies have been granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (see previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10616/">previous story). The company also announced that it has acquired the rights to "strategic" patents from the former Carver Corp. covering a variety of audio reproduction and amplifier technologies.

According to the latest statistics from the Consumer">http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), overall consumer electronics sales for 2000 posted gains of 7% over 1999, reaching $8 billion. However, overall audio sales at the end of 2000 dropped as compared with November 1999, declining 5%, with $854 million in revenues for the month. The CEA says that sales to dealers of separate audio components also declined in November dipping around 4% as compared to the same period in 1999, but overall, sales of separate audio components have had a positive year rising 7% to $1.4 billion in revenue thus far.

Drummer Billy Higgins started his remarkable career backing up R&B musicians such as Amos Milburn and Bo Diddley around the LA area before embarking on his jazz path with the Jazz Messengers (led by Don Cherry and saxophonist James Clay) and Dexter Gordon. But it was his association with Ornette Coleman, starting in the mid 1950s, that electrified the jazz world and made him a force to reckon with. His first recordings, with Coleman and Red Mitchell, were released in 1958. In 1959, he performed with both Coleman in New York and Thelonious Monk in San Francisco, and from that point on, he never stopped recording or touring.

In a move that some cynics are calling "the beginning of the end" for the Secure">http://www.sdmi.org/">Secure Digital Music Initiative, the group's director has abruptly resigned. Leonard Chiariglione, who has headed the cross-industry anti-piracy organization since its inception more than two years ago, made the announcement Wednesday, January 24 at the first SDMI meeting of 2001.

Citing the desire to take advantage of the power of sharing audio files over the Internet, one of the larger independent record labels, TVT">http://www.tvtrecords.com/">TVT Records, announced last week that it has withdrawn its copyright claims against the file-sharing company Napsterhttp://www.napster.com/">Napster;. TVT said that the basis for its decision to end the lawsuit and provide its support to Napster is "the new service Napster is evolving under the strategic alliance it recently announced with Bertelsmann AG." TVT points out that, since Bertelsmann is still technically a party to litigation with Napster, it becomes the first record label to fully settle with the beleagured Web company.