With the introduction of Audio Alchemy's Digital Transmission Interface (DTI) more than three years ago, the company created an entirely new category of hi-fi product: the jitter filter. The original DTI was a good start, but didn't always improve the sound of the better-quality digital front-ends.

"Grand Integra" is the name Onkyo has given to its line of perfectionist-oriented audio products, and the M-508 is the cheaper of Onkyo's two Grand Integra power amplifiers. (The flagship model is the $4200 M-510, reviewed by Larry Greenhill in Vol.8 No.8, featuring "high current capability," and rated at 300W continuous per channel.)

Over at AudioStream, my man Michael Lavorgna mentions Diogenes: Digital Home for Experimental Music. I stumbled upon the site yesterday. Thinking that ML would love it, I forwarded the link to him immediately. I was right!

For the adventurous music lover who craves new, unusual sounds&#151stuff that might challenge, that might delight, and that will certainly expand your mind&#151and for the audiophile who primarily uses a computer as a source, Diogenes is an online heaven.

The guitarist John Abercrombie's latest, Within a Song (on ECM) is something of a high-wire act: delicate music of an uninsistent intensity, a quiet swing, that hangs together or collapses on the ensemble's sustenance of balance. The musicians here—Joe Lovano on tenor sax, Drew Gress on bass, Joey Baron on drums—are masters at this sort of thing (and many other things too), and so it's a riveting album. Even when they coast, swish, and twirl along the slightest thread, you're carried along (or I was anyway).

Just a brief comment to note the passing on Saturday August 11 of Italian audio distributor Enzo Natali, pictured at the 2012 CES second from left above with UK distributor Ricardo Franassovici (left) and Enzo's two sons Luca and Marco (right and far right). (My thanks to Ricardo for allowing me to publish both this picture and the one below.)

There's so much uncertainty and confusion surrounding computer audio and high-resolution downloads. Which hi-rez formats will win out? How do you store the downloads you've bought? (Easy. Don't buy them.) How do you access them? Will digital rights management (DRM) cramp your style, or data-storage fees for cloud computing crumple your wallet?