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Distressed Carver">http://www.carver.com/">Carver Corporation announced August 31 that founder Bob Carver has signed a letter of intent to return as chairman and CEO of the company he founded 20 years ago. The letter also spells out conditions for a possible merger of Carver and Sunfire">http://www.sunfire.com/">Sunfire Corporation as early as 18 months from now. Sunfire, manufacturer of the highly regarded Sunfire power amplifiers, is Bob Carver's privately held company.

It wasn't easy building the perfect audio system---endless hours spent choosing synergistic components, and working that impossible room to its greatest advantage. Why not share the struggle, the rewards, and the knowledge gained by sending information about your audio environment to us here at Stereophile?

Several weeks ago, we reportedhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10211/">reported; on the revival of McCormack Audio by Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson, who purchased the company's assets at an auction in Southern California. This past week, McCormack Audio has announced that one of the original co-founders, Steve McCormack, has rejoined the company as Director of Research and Development. McCormack had worked at the company from its inception in 1982 until 1996.

In anticipation of the upcoming 1.0 DVD-Audio specification (see previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10236/">previous article), Sonic">http://www.sonic.com/">Sonic Solutions and Warner">http://www.warnerbros.com/frame_moz3_day.html">Warner Music Group wasted no time in announcing their intent to collaborate in creating new multichannel high-density recordings to showcase the new format. Warner was one of the first major labels to deliver music via CD, and Warner's video division has never been shy in their support of Open-DVD for video. So it comes as no surprise that they're one of the first major music houses out of the gate for the audio version of DVD.

A few years ago, when media pundits began discussing the possible ramifications of 500 channels of television, the concept of "narrowcasting" quickly became the buzzword du jour. The idea was that programming in the future would be aimed at increasingly better-defined markets. Rather than an all-sports channel, an astute broadcaster would operate multiple channels devoted to individual sports: an all-basketball channel, for example, or round-the-clock motor sports. Advertising tailored for a tightly defined market might prove more efficient than its shotgun-effect equivalent.

Looks like it might be a while before a profitable formula jells for selling music over the Internet. News this week indicates that one of the largest music retailers, Tower">http://www.towerrecords.com">Tower Records, is finally ready to challenge the market, while online distribution pioneer N2Khttp://www.n2k.com">N2K; will be scaling back operations until things steady a bit.

The latest music-piracy statistics have just been released by the RIAAhttp://www.riaa.com/">RIAA;, bringing to light several new wrinkles in the ongoing struggle to protect the owners of music copyrights from those who illegally copy and sell protected works. Released August 21, the report details the new problems brought about by CD-R technology and MP3 files distributed via the web.