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The Recording">http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America's lawsuit against Napsterhttp://www.napster.com/">Napster; may be an attack on one of its best friends, if results of a recent study by research organization Jupiter">http://www.jupiter.com/">Jupiter Communications can be believed.

A merger announced Wednesday, July 12 by Columbia, Maryland–based USA">http://www.usadr.com/">USA Digital Radio and Lucent">http://www.lucentdigitalradio.com/">Lucent Digital Radio of Warren, New Jersey may hasten the creation of a unified US standard for terrestrial digital radio, according to industry analysts. The merger was approved by the National Radio Systems Committee, which is in charge of developing a set of digital radio specifications for the US. It was also backed by 15 companies involved in the rollout of digital radio, including Viacom Inc.'s Infinity Broadcasting Corp. and Clear Channel Communications, Inc.

Chip Stern notes that, "as often as not, it ain't the heat—it's the stupidity. When confronted by the smattering of self-referential dilettantes, acrimonious Internut wannabes, and obsessive-compulsive types who suck the air out of our aural fun-house, I find myself overcome with the desire to program my phaser for Clip." And fire away he does in "Snobs">http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/246/">Snobs, Slobs, & Marley's Ghost," added to the Archives this week.

Audiophiles have complained since the earliest days of the compact disc that music reissued in the digital format often doesn't sound as good as it does on the original LPs. For nearly 20 years, such complaints have been dismissed by ordinary music lovers and by music-industry executives as the rantings of purists, but at least one major label is now admitting that many early CDs were not very good.

With Napsterhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10793/">Napster; as the little red devil with a pitchfork prodding them on, the third-largest record company in the world, EMIhttp://www.emigroup.com">EMI;, making good on its earlier">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10745/">earlier announcement, last week became the first major label to begin releasing music online. In a move the company hopes will silence the critics who say that Napster has become successful because the big labels have provided no Web-based alternatives, EMI put over 100 albums and 40 singles online "through all the normal retail websites."

For technophiles, DVD is the current hot ticket. The compact disc is far from dead, however. The 20-year-old format has been given a new lease on life by Sony">http://www.sony.com/">Sony Corporation, which in early July announced the development of a new technique that will double the data-storage capacity of recordable CDs.

Editor's Note: Richard">http://www.richardhess.com">Richard Hess has recently spent time remastering several CDs and wrote about the experience for an engineering newsgroup. We think Stereophile's online readers will find his comments about the process interesting.