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Audiophiles of a certain age may very well have first tasted high-end sound by way of Linn's 1972 Sondek">http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/1103linn/">Sondek LP12 turntable and/or Naim's 1982 Nait">http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/660/">Nait integrated amplifier. There aren't many audio manufacturers that have managed to keep components in production for 25 years (35 for the Linn), but the two venerable British designs have been continuously upgraded over their lives, keeping them competitive.

John Atkinson forwarded a message to me on February 26 from reader Peter Clissold: "The Miller and Kreisel website is indicating that operations there are closed."

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, which last June became one of the first orchestras in the US to launch its">http://www.stereophile.com/news/101005milwaukee">its own e-label, has now become the first orchestra to offer download-only">http://www.milwaukeesymphony.org/symphonystore/othermerchandise.asp">do… binaural recordings. The binaural process, whose benefits are most apparent to those who listen through headphones, is based on the concept that the best way to reproduce the concert experience is to make sure that the recorded sounds that go into the listener's ears are as close as possible to what would be heard during an actual concert.

Carson City, NV loudspeaker company Wisdom Audio has been aggressively reorganizing itself lately. The first part of the program was re-uniting founder Tom Bohlender with erstwhile partner David Graebner to refine and perfect the magnetic planar speaker technology used by Wisdom's hybrid planar/dynamic loudspeakers. Then, in October 2006, the company appointed industry veteran Mark Glazier presidenthttp://stereophile.com/news/100906glazier/">president;. On February 8, Glazier announced that Jon Herron would join the company as vice president of sales.

We wrote last week about the increasingly">http://www.stereophile.com/news/021207drm/">increasingly heated debate over DRM copy protection, with everybody from Steve Jobs to the RIAA weighing in on the subject. This week was just as wild and whacky on that front.

Recordings that deliver the benefits of the high-resolution SACD format scored big at the 49^th Grammy Awards Ceremony, held February 11, 2007 in Los Angeles. Telarc, which issues virtually all its classical titles and some jazz/blues releases in both DSD-native CD and hybrid SACD surround formats, won two Grammys in classical categories and three in jazz. SFS Media, the in-house label of the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, received two Grammys for the seventh release in its ongoing Mahler series of live, DSD-native hybrid surround SACDs. Last but not least, Harmonia Mundi, some of whose titles are available in DSD-native hybrid surround SACD, scored big with the gorgeous choral music of Arvo Pärt.

Many people remember the 1990 Milli Vanilli scandal, in which Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan were stripped of their Best New Artist Grammy award when it was revealed they hadn't actually performed on the disc. Of course, "borrowing" has long been a part of the pop music world, as George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord," Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love," and almost any sampled recording can attest; however, most listeners have probably assumed things are a lot more straightforward in the world of classical performance and recording.