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Paul Wilbur Klipsch, legendary inventor and engineer from America's "golden age of audio," died May 5. The founder of Klipsch">http://www.klipsch.com">Klipsch Audio Technologies was 98.

Otis Blackwell, the prolific songwriter who helped propel the careers of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, died Wednesday, May 9 in Nashville. The cause of death was an apparent heart attack, according to a spokesman for St. Thomas Hospital. Blackwell was 70.

Cirrus">http://www.cirrus.com">Cirrus Logic Inc. has introduced two new high-performance analog-to-digital converters. The CS5361 and CS5351 are said to deliver professional sound quality for audio/video receivers (AVRs) and DVD recorders (DVD-Rs) at mainstream consumer prices. The new chips are OEM-priced at $4.95 and $3.95 respectively, in quantities of 10,000 or more.

John Atkinson heads across America's great plains toward Kansas to engineer a brand-new recording that he and Les Berkley document in A">http://www.stereophile.com//features/575/">A Mosaic of Music: Stereophile's Clarinet Quintet CD. For the new CD, JA returns again to Chad Kassem's audio Mecca, noting that "105 takes of the Mozart and 102 takes of the Brahms later, we had gotten everything down on tape in two days of intense music-making."

Home">http://www.homeentertainment-expo.com">Home Entertainment 2002 is set to open to the public as planned, May 31–June 2, 2002, at the Hilton New York & Towers Hotel in New York City. Show attendees will be treated to numerous free educational seminars and musical performances from a dozen popular jazz, classical, and contemporary recording artists.

For Vivendi">http://www.vivendi.com">Vivendi Universal SA, when it rains, it pours. Just two weeks after chief executive Jean-Marie Messier ousted Pierre Lescure, the president of France's Canal">http://www.canalplus.fr">Canal Plus television company—an event that caused demonstrations in the streets of Paris and paroxysms of nationalistic fervor among France's 18 presidential candidates—a complicated stock deal got vastly more complicated, resulting in a $250 million payment due to A&M Records founders Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss.

At the start of his review of the Balanced">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/570/">Balanced Audio Technology VK-D5 CD player, Jonathan Scull observes, "Man, has Balanced Audio Technology come a long way in a short time." Scull goes in-depth with the VK-D5 to explain just what he's found.

Where Pogs and Pokemon once ruled, HitClipshttp://www.tigertoys.com/newhitclips/">HitClips; have taken over. HitClips are hot. So hot, in fact, that Hasbro">http://www.hasbro.com">Hasbro Incorporated's Tiger Electronics division has sold more than 20 million of them at $3.99 each. That's $80 million gross on a single product, a figure that probably no high-end audio company has ever reached.

Last week's online">http://www.stereophile.com/vote.shtml">online poll indicates that many Stereophile readers have an ongoing affinity for the retro design style of older audio gear. Several respondents say they find the warm glow of tubes and backlit displays seductively attractive in a darkened room, while others pine for the days of analog dials and softly lit meters with gently bouncing needles.

The Recording">http://www.riaa.com">Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has requested increased federal funding for the ongoing struggle against the pirating of recorded music. On Tuesday, April 23, the organization's executives asked the US House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee for more money to pursue pirates. Such allocations come directly from tax revenues, according to reports from Washington.