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When CDs were becoming popular, Neil Young made no secret of his disdain for the sound of digital. Interviews from the period quoted him as saying that the sound "left him cold," and he would rather listen to an LP, thank you very much. To this day, his new CD releases also appear on vinyl, but with the advent of DVD-Audio, sampling and quantization rates have improved—enough, apparently for Mr. Young's approval.

Two top executives at Bertelsmann">http://www.bmg.com/">Bertelsmann Music Group will depart in the wake of the company's recent settlementhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10885/">settlement; of its lawsuit against Napster. Citing irreconcilable differences with parent company Bertelsmann AG over company strategy, BMG chief executive Strauss Zelnick and chairman Michael Dornemann announced their resignations Sunday November 5.

For the music industry, copyright and royalty litigation is like an endless war fought on many fronts. During early November, as four of the industry's "Big Five" continued their pursuit of the file-sharing service Napster, a parallel trial in US Federal Court in New York against music archiving-and-accessing site MP3.comhttp://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com; by Universal">http://www.umusic.com/">Universal Music Group entered its penalty phase, that segment of the proceeding in which aggrieved plaintiffs seek to extract money from guilty defendants. Other plaintiffs in the trial—Sony Music Entertainment, BMG, Warner Music, and EMI—have all settled with the San Diego-based Internet service for an average of $20 million each.

Larry Greenhill writes: "I can't resist reading about a company's flagship loudspeaker—the price-no-object product that embodies the most advanced ideas from a company's research and design department . . . The cost? Don't ask." Six years in development, the Dynaudio">http://www.stereophile.com//features/286/">Dynaudio Evidence loudspeaker is just such a cutting-edge product. So, Greenhill explains, "when the opportunity arose to review the Evidence, the flagship speaker from Danish company Dynaudio, I eagerly agreed." His verdict awaits.

Chip Stern writes, "There is something enduring and reassuring in the classic audio verities." The Vandersteen">http://www.stereophile.com//loudspeakerreviews/284/">Vandersteen 2Ce Signature loudspeaker is certainly considered one of those timeless classics. But how does a speaker released in its first incarnation more than 20 years ago hold up by today's standards? Stern lends his modern ear to the task and includes notes from Richard Vandersteen himself.

Could this be a record executive's dream come true and the end of the need for watermarking as we know it? CantaMetrixhttp://www.CantaMetrix.com/">CantaMetrix; has announced the further development of a new technology, MusicDNA, that the company claims is capable of identifying and tracking the billions of existing as well as new MP3 files on the Internet and providing an exact accounting for the copyright, "thus enabling legal file sharing and linking value-added data to songs."

Sidney Smith, revered audio engineer and a founding father of the modern audio industry, passed away on October 25, 2000 after a battle with cancer. He was 77. Sid, a family man, left a loving wife, Marilyn, three caring daughters, Jennie, Pattie, and Laura, and two grandchildren.