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Lars is dead.

They have become the companies music fans around the world love to hate. But to their stockholders, the businesses developing CD-restriction technologies are a promising new technology niche for investing. SunnCommhttp://www.sunncomm.com">SunnComm; is one of these new companies dedicated to finding means to restrict the ways consumers can use compact discs, and last week they used their annual stockholder meeting as an opportunity to announce their latest copy-protection product.

Earlier this year, Kalman Rubinson spent some time with the Rotel">http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/608/">Rotel RB 1080 power amplifier. "What could be easier to review than a power amplifier? No features or functions aside from inputs, outputs, and a power switch," remarks KR. But as Rubinson finds, it's the details that count.

Michael Fremer heard that the Alesis">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/605/">Alesis MasterLink ML-9600 Hard Disk/CD-R Recorder "can sound better than all but the absolute top-drawer analog," and, of course, had to investigate. Mikey 'splains why audiophiles should take note of a machine generally used as a mastering tool by the recording industry.

Some Webcasters were given a stay of execution in late June, when the Librarian of Congress announced that they would be required to pay royalties at half the rate proposed by an arbitration panel last winter.

SACD partisans Sony and Philips continue to release new disc players that also decode DVD-Video, but not DVD-Audio. And arch-DVD-A supporter Meridian, as well as companies such as McIntosh, are releasing DVD-A and DVD-V players that don't do SACD. But there are exceptions, notably Pioneerhttp://www.pioneerelectronics.com">Pioneer;, who debuted the first widely available "universal" player, the DV-AX10">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/515/">DV-AX10 SACD/DVD-A/CD player, last year.

It's been a long wait, but we're finally starting to see high-bandwidth IEEE 1394 digital audio connections on the back of DVD-A/SACD players (see related">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11369/">related story), as first hinted">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10049/">hinted at by Yamaha five years ago. A key ingredient for getting the beleaguered 1394 (or FireWire or iLink) format moving was the inclusion of copy-protection protocols that restrict unfettered consumer use of the digital audio content.