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On August 15, Sonos announced the release of Sonos System Software v2.3, which adds Sirius Internet Radio connectivity to the company's line of digital music systems. Sirius subscribers who own Sonos systems can add that system to their coverage for an additional $2.99/month. Sonos system owners who do not already subscribe to Sirius can purchase Sirius Internet Radio subscriptions for $12.95/month.

The Harvey acquisition of MyerEmco announced in Mayhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/051407harvey/">May; has been called off. The merger—which was supposed to have closed by June 7, later extended to the end of July, and then pushed back to August 10—called for Harvey to pay $10 million in cash and assume MyerEmco's debt.

XM/Sirius: Did we just hear the other shoe drop on the XM Satellite Radio/Sirius Satellite Radio merger? On July 25, XM founder and CEO Hugh Panero announced he would leave the company in August. The company named COO Nate Davis president and interim CEO.

Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris isn't exactly a fan of portable digital players—in November 2006, he referred to them as "just repositories for stolen music." Yet, on August 9, UMG announced that it would offer at least some of its artists' music as MP3 files without digital rights management (DRM) on RealNetworks, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Rhapsody, PureTracks, Transworld, and artists' own websites. Everywhere, that is, except on Apple's iTunes Store, where UMG files will have Apple's FairPlay DRM installed.

At CES 2007, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was developing a Windows&#174">http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver">…; Home Server, saying, "As computers and digital media become more and more central to family life, we need better ways to organize, share, and protect digital content and information at home. Windows Home Server makes it easy for families to save, protect and access digital memories and experiences, so they can focus on using technology to organize their day-to-day lives, explore their interests, and share their memories with the people they care about."

As it has for the last 11 years, The">http://www.thecableco.com/">The Cable Company, along with many of its vendors, is dedicating August to help some of "the poorest people in the most ravaged regions of the world."

Stereophile started publishing its "Recording">http://www.stereophile.com/recordingofthemonth/">Recording of the Month" feature in its December 1992 issue, with the late Igor Kipnis's rave">http://www.stereophile.com/recordingofthemonth/1292rotm/">rave review of Keith Jarrett performing Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues.

In audio, there's brand loyalty and then there's McIntosh loyalty. Part of that, of course, is that the manufacturer's black glass face panels and glowing blue meters have become audio icons that generations of audiophiles have grown up lusting after, but part of it is undoubtedly because McIntosh is so very good at fostering a sense of community.

Recently we received an SOS from fearless leader John Atkinson. Dolby is staging a press event on an evening I have a schedule conflict, he wrote. Could you attend in my stead? As obligations go, attending an industry dinner is not exactly the most onerous task going—alcohol is frequently served (the best way to guarantee the press shows up) and you get to hang out with your fellow A/V journalists, an admittedly mixed blessing. What is not assured is that there will actually be news.

Back in the bad old pioneer days of high fidelity, the 1960s and early 1970s, amplifier manufacturers embarked on a specifications war, claiming ever lower percentages of total harmonic distortion. But, as J. Gordon Holt presciently pointed out in the 1960s, without reference to the spectrum of the distortion harmonics, the actual percentage was not in itself a reliable indicator of an amplifier's sound quality. And as those early low-THD models had distortion spectra that were heavily biased toward the sonically objectionable fifth, seventh, and ninth harmonics, and suffered from other related ills, they tended to sound quite nasty.