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Imagine this: You're a modern kind of audiophile, and your music library is loaded and sorted (without any compression, of course) onto a hard-disk–based audio system which is networked throughout the house. You've also got a hard-disk–based audio system in your car.

Although some record labels have scaled back plans to add restricted-use technology to all CD releases, efforts continue to find the protection formula that consumers, and in particular record labels, will accept.

With the advent of Dolby Digital, DTS, DVD-Audio, and SACD, multichannel audio and its enthusiasts are not lacking for playback formats. What has been lacking, however, is recognition for outstanding achievements in the fledgeling surround music business. But not anymore.

On December 14, the music industry and small webcasters concluded their long and often-acrimonious negotiations on royalties. The two parties—the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) "SoundExchange," a royalty-collecting body, and the Voice of Webcasters (VOW)—filed an agreement with the US Copyright Office in Washington that details generalities agreed to under the Small Webcaster Settlement Act (SWSA), signed December 4.

The music industry intends to leave no stone unturned in its war on piracy. Just a week after reports emerged about crackdowns on sales of pirated CDs at flea">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11514/">flea markets and swap meets, the Recording">http://www.riaa.com">Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced a campaign to eliminate sales of unauthorized discs at gas stations, grocery and convenience stores, and small independent music outlets.

Electronics retailers typically depend on the winter holiday shopping season to boost their year-end bottom lines. The hoped-for buying surge apparently hasn't happened in 2002, since Best Buy and Circuit City are both projecting slow sales.

Larry Greenhill wonders, "In crossing over into transistor products, would Conrad-Johnson be able to retain the simplicity, low distortion, and musicality of their tube designs?" LG fires up the Conrad-Johnson">http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/734/">Conrad-Johnson Premier 18LS line preamplifier to satisfy his curiosity.

Visit any major metropolitan city, and chances are you'll eventually stumble upon vendors selling pirate CDs from outdoor tables, often for as little as $5 each. But for the suburban resident in the US, flea markets are where the pirate action is.

Wireless local audio/video networks and surround sound systems have long been one of the electronics industry's holy grails, given the fact that a major cost in installing home theaters or whole-house audio systems is the wiring. The market potential is so great that major chipmakers have invested enormous amounts of research in developing products that would enable easy placement of audio and video systems anywhere in a home without the need for dedicated wiring.

Warner">http://www.warnermusic.com">Warner Music Group is supporting efforts by the DVD Forum to create a hybrid dual-layer CD/DVD-audio disc, according to reports from New York the first week of December. WMG, a unit of AOL Time Warner, is one of the music industry's principal backers of the DVD-Audio format.