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The first hybrid SACDs produced and recorded in Russia have made their way to North America. The new Russian company responsible for the recordings, Essential Music, issues them on the Caro Mitis label, whose name is Latin for "succulent fruit." All are recorded in multichannel DSD and released as hybrid SACD/CDs. Caro Mitis releases are imported by Todd Garfinkle of M•A">http://www.marecordings.com">M•A Recordings. Garfinkle himself has been responsible for some of the most enjoyable audiophile recordings of unusual performers and repertoire in the catalog.

Speaking at the Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles on February 23, Yahoo Music's general manager Dave Goldberg startled listeners with a statement probably never previously heard from the head of a for-pay digital music service: Lay off the DRM.

Signal savings: Signals SuperFi, LLC did something you don't see every day: It actually lowered its price for Stereovox Reference level SEI-600 interconnects. The SEI-600 is a line-level, single-ended, single-jacket "stereo" cable. Signals has dropped the price of a 1m pair from $999.99 to $749.99 (each extra 0.5m adds $250).

One of the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is that the US Copyright Office hold hearings every three years to ensure that the DMCA is operating properly. For one month prior to those hearings any interested party can submit comments calling for exceptions or revisions. The latest comment period began on January 4, 2006 and has resulted in some fascinating comments.

If the rumors are true, Amazon, the giant Internet retailer of books, recordings, videos, and just about everything else, is about to embark upon a music subscription service—complete with Amazon-branded music players at a deep discount, or perhaps even for free.

Irony reigns supreme on this week's installment of XM Daze.

At CES2006, we were pleasantly surprised to encounter Jim Shannon in Quartet Marketing Group's exhibit room at the Alexis Villas. "What are you doing these days?" we asked. He gestured around the room. "I'm a partner in Quartet," he said. "I've been here since July."

A University of Michigan research team under Kensall D. Wise has developed a ribbon-like cochlear implant that substantially increases the amount of auditory stimuli over the current models. Approximately 100,000 patients have had cochlear implants to ameliorate profound deafness; however, Wise described these implants as limited in frequency sensitivity, as well as bulky and difficult for surgeons to insert.

It's the ultimate talent show each year, and I don't think you'll find a bigger collection of musical firepower under one roof (Live 8 was outdoors after all): Paul McCartney, U2, Madonna, Gorillaz, Mariah Carey, Coldplay, Linkin Park, Sly Stone, Herbie Hancock, and on and on.

The fourth round of RCA Red Seal Living Stereo hybrid SACD/CDs hit the literal and virtual shelves on February 7. [Kalman Rubinson wrote about the first batch here.—Ed.http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/1104mitr/">here.—E…;] Remastered from the original two- and three-channel master tapes using the DSD process, these 10 new SACDs present the material exactly as it was recorded, without equalization, filtering, or other tampering.