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One of the oldest names in American audio is venturing into new territory. Indianapolis, IN–based Klipsch">http://www.klipsch.com/">Klipsch Audio Technologies has acquired "selected assets" of privately held Mondial">http://www.mondialdesigns.com/">Mondial Designs Ltd. of Dobbs Ferry, NY, maker of the Acurus and Aragon brands of amplifiers, preamps, and signal processors. Paul Rosenberg, Mondial's co-founder and former vice president, will become a director at his new parent company, with primary responsibilities in marketing and product development for Acurus and Aragon. Mondial chief engineer Adam Gershon and senior engineer Michael Kusiak will also remain with the company. Anthony Federici, Mondial's president, has moved on to form a new company called D & A Labs, which plans to debut a "high-end home theater receiver" this spring, with other quality electronics to follow.

The "Big Five" of the recorded music industry is one step closer to becoming the "Big Four," according to late-January reports from Frankfurt, Germany, home of Bertelsmann">http://www.bertelsmann.de/">Bertelsmann AG. Bertelsmann is the parent company of Bertelsmann">http://www.bmg.com/">Bertelsmann Music Group, which has been in merger discussions for several months with the United Kingdom's http://www.emigroup.com/"> EMI Group PLC. Discussions are near completion, according to a BMG official.

After a frustrating late-night duel with evil recording gremlins, JA called it a day. But the next morning he was back at the controls to record Canadian pianist Robert Silverman for what would subsequently become one of Stereophile's popular audiophile recordings: Intermezzo: Works for Piano by Brahms. In Intermezzo:">http://www.stereophile.com//musicrecordings/311/">Intermezzo: The Santa Barbara Sessions, writer Thomas Norton runs down the key events that finally resulted in a completed analog master tape, with engineering from Water Lily Acoustics' Kavichandran Alexander.

Sony may be pretending that DVD-Audio doesn't exist, and Panasonic may be in denial about SACD, but a new chip from Texas">http://www.ti.com">Texas Instruments just might help bring the rival formats a little closer together in consumer living rooms and professional recording studios alike.

A billion-dollar loss for the parent company may be a big gain for performers under contract to Warner">http://www.wmg.com/">Warner Music Group, who will benefit from cross-promotional efforts aimed at millions of America">http://www.aol.com/">America Online subscribers beginning this month.

As Michael Fremer puts it, "In analog, it's the little things that count, and Rega's upgrade of the basic Planar 3 design to the Planar 25 can only be described as visibly 'small.' But the sonic improvements I heard during my first encounter with the $1275 arm/'table combo were audibly big." Fremer takes a close look at and listen to the Rega">http://www.stereophile.com//analogsourcereviews/309/">Rega Planar 25 turntable for Stereophile readers and attempts to reveal all of its secrets. Sam Tellig adds his two cents' worth.

According to the latest statistics from the Consumer">http://www.ce.org">Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), overall consumer electronics sales for 2000 posted gains of 7% over 1999, reaching $8 billion. However, overall audio sales at the end of 2000 dropped as compared with November 1999, declining 5%, with $854 million in revenues for the month. The CEA says that sales to dealers of separate audio components also declined in November dipping around 4% as compared to the same period in 1999, but overall, sales of separate audio components have had a positive year rising 7% to $1.4 billion in revenue thus far.