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"No doubt about it—Linn's top-of-the-line Komri">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/555/">Komri loudspeaker is a queer-lookin' duck," says Jonathan Scull as he set up a pair in his listening lair. The claimed frequency response for the Komri extends out to 40kHz. "Why even bother going out that high, where even the most beautiful of women cannot hear?" J-10 explains why.

As normally conceived, loudspeakers use electrodynamic forces to control the movements of their diaphragms, which in turn move air. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. has come up with an interesting twist on this principle, one in which air pressure itself ("aerodynamic-drive technology") is used to control the diaphragm. The result is a transparent panel speaker called the "Sound Window," announced by the Japanese industrial giant March 27.

Following the tragic events of September 11 last year, Audio">http://www.audioasylum.com">Audio Asylum and Audiogonhttp://www.audiogon.com">Audiogon; co-sponsored a charity">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11141/">charity auction of audio equipment to benefit the NY Firefighters' Fund and other related charities. Manufacturers, dealers, magazine writers and editors, and audiophiles donated equipment, recordings, and memorabilia for sale, and as reported">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11159/">reported on this website, the auction ultimately raised almost $175,000 for 9/11-related charities.

Analog audio electronics are approaching "maturity," a state eventually achieved by most technologies, in which almost all the great discoveries have been made and progress becomes a process of increasingly arcane refinements. Digital audio is in no such danger, as evidenced by three new product announcements made the first week of April.

In a never-ending quest to control what it believes is an epidemic of piracy, the music industry in recent years has gone after Internet file-sharing startups, fly-by-night CD duplicators, foreign pirates operating on an industrial scale, college kids with too much time on their hands, and street-corner vendors hawking badly-duped cassettes. At times the anti-piracy campaign has reached the fervor of a witch hunt, with blame laid on the innocent as well as the guilty.

Back in September of 1986, the KEF">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/550/">KEF R107 loudspeaker represented the flagship of KEF's much admired Reference Series. Dick Olsher and a variety of other Stereophile scribes profile this important audio achievement over the course of five years, wrapping up with Tom Norton's 1995 review of the R107/2 "Raymond Cooke Signature Edition."

You have to wonder what Sony is thinking. The product">http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/digitalstudio/index.shtml">product copy claims that the new Sony "VAIO Digital Studio" computer is the company's "incredible computing and entertainment hybrid combining television, recording, playback and even music." Oooops. Forget about that music part, especially if you purchase Sony Music's latest Celine Dion CD.