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In June, while the Recording">http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America was collecting fat settlementshttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10208/">settlements; from unauthorized CD compilers, its Canadian counterpart was busy shutting down Purple">http://www.purpledot.zener.com/">Purple Dot, a custom-disc operation in Calgary, Alberta. The Canadian Recording Industry Association e-mailed a cease-and-desist order to 18-year-old Robert Clark, owner and operator of Purple Dot, which had been advertising on the Internet in the Yahoo!http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo!; directory.

Up from the deep: Torrance, CA-based Wherehouse">http://wherehouse.com/">Wherehouse Entertainment announced last week that it will purchase Blockbuster">http://www.blockbuster.com/music">Blockbuster Music from Viacom Inc. for $115 million. The merged operation will have 598 stores throughout North America, second only to Minnesota-based Musicland. The deal comes at the end of a prolonged slump for the music industry, one that was particularly hard for Blockbuster.

As with past HI-FI Shows, we asked visitors to HI-FI '98 to vote for the room that offered what they thought to be the best sound. The ballot in the Show Guide asked visitors to list the best, second-best, third-best, and worst sounds, for which I allocated 3 points, 2 points, 1 point, and -1 point, respectively. Any exhibitor that received more than 0.7% of the total votes cast is listed in the Table. I've tried to include both the exhibitors and the brands demonstrated, as listed in the Show Guide and in our report text in the September issue of the paper Stereophile. My apologies if I've left anyone out.

The Paradigm">http://www.paradigm.ca">Paradigm Group announced today that they have entered into an agreement to purchase the assets of Sonic">http://www.sonicfrontiers.com">Sonic Frontiers Inc., of Oakville, Ontario, as the first step in a comprehensive restructuring plan that will lead to an expansion of Sonic Frontiers.

Another crucial piece of the DVD-Audio puzzle fell into place recently when the WG-4 (Working Group 4) DVD-Audio Working Group approved the adoption of MLP (see previous articles 1http://www.stereophile.com/news/10188/">1;, 2http://www.stereophile.com/news/10200/">2;) as the lossless algorithm for DVD-Audio at its August 5th meeting in Tokyo. WG-4 will require official approval from its supervising organizations, the Technical Coordination Group and Steering Committee---considered a formality at this point.

Some products inspire unwavering loyalty among their owners: Gibson's "Les Paul" Guitars, for example, or Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Only a handful of audio manufacturers have been lucky enough for their products to attain this kind of cult status. McIntosh is perhaps premier among them. Individual products---Audio Research preamps, Marantz tuners, Linn turntables---also have deservedly loyal and sizable followings.

Protection for the creative community or job security for lawyers? These are but two of many interpretations of the Digital">http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:h.r.02281:">Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which won approval by voice vote in the US House of Representatives August 4. The bill will implement into US law the treaties signed by 157 signatories at the World Intellectual Properties Organization conference in Geneva in December 1996. A separate version was passed by the Senate in May. Differences between the two must be ironed out before a final version can be signed into law by President Clinton.