Harmonia Mundi, one of the world's leading independent classical music labels, has finally taken the downloading plunge. In an agreement with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), the world's largest distributor of digital music content, announced on January 24 at the annual music conference of the Marche International De l'Edition Musicale (MIDEM) in Cannes, Harmonia Mundi will make available its entire catalogue of early music and contemporary recordings to hundreds of digital music outlets around the world. IODA will also handle digital distribution of HM's catalogue within France, where Harmonia Mundi is headquartered. A separate agreement with Apple's iTunes makes all Harmonia Mundi titles available on that site as well. Also available are the classical, world, and jazz titles from the more than 30 independent labels that Harmonia Mundi distributes in many parts of the world.

Out of all the audiophile phrases, none stirs the hearts of music lovers like "true to the master tape"—not even "the absolute sound" of the original instruments, which even audio idealists realize is simply too much to demand. But true to the sound of the recorded master tape, now surely that's a goal within reach.

PS Audio's Paul McGowan is a man with a mission: He wants to teach audiophiles about AC power, from the creation of the universe to its final destination in our contemporary electronics components. Toward that end, McGowan wrote, produced, and narrated a one-hour documentary DVD called <I>From Coal to Coltrane</I>, which provides a lively look at a subject many of us take for granted.

Okay, now things are getting confusing. Hot on the heels of his <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/010107hacked/">announcement</A&gt; that he had hacked HD DVD's Advanced Access Content System (AACS) digital rights management (DRM), muslix64 claimed to have done the same to Blu-Ray's implementation, with the help of anti-DRM crusader Janvitos. You can read the whole saga at the <A HREF="http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120869">Doom9 forum</A> but we'll just give you the juicy bits: "In less than 24 hours, without any Blu-ray equipment, but with the help of Janvitos, I managed to decrypt and play a Blu-ray media file using my known-plaintext attack."