<B>TOM WAITS: <I>Beautiful Maladies</I></B><BR> Island 314-524 519-2 (CD). 1998. Various prods., engs. AAD? TT: 74:00<BR> Performance <B>*****</B><BR> Sonics <B>****?</B>

The Three Tenors may have reached a global audience of 2 billion people during their performance prior to the final game of the World Cup, but they had only 80,000 fans on hand in Paris's Champs de Mars park, acording to estimates by Paris police. That number was only 10% of the anticipated 800,000, most of whom stayed away because of unseasonably cold and windy weather.

Canton, MA-based <A HREF="http://www.tweeter.com/">Tweeter Home Entertainment Group</A> (NASDAQ: TWTR) has gone public. Last Thursday, July 16, the East Coast audio and video retailer launched an initial public stock offering of 2.71 million shares at an offering price of $17/share.

Are order and justice coming to the lawless frontier of the Internet? The <A HREF="http://www.ascap.com/">American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers</A> has a new tool for cracking down on unauthorized use of copyrighted material on the Internet. Developed by <A HREF="http://www.omservices.com/">Online Monitoring Services</A>, EZ-Seeker is "web crawler" software that tracks down music and then issues license forms to the users of that music. The announcement followed by less than a week the news (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10208/">previous report</A>) of the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America</A>'s $750,000 settlement from makers of unauthorized "DJ compilations" of hit songs.

Tone controls? I ripped them out of my Dyna PAS-3! And that was the last time I had tone controls. As a card-carrying audiophile, I wanted just what the engineer had inscribed on the recording, with as little change as possible (read: high fidelity).

Tone controls? I ripped them out of my Dyna PAS-3! And that was the last time I had tone controls. As a card-carrying audiophile, I wanted just what the engineer had inscribed on the recording, with as little change as possible (read: high fidelity).

Tone controls? I ripped them out of my Dyna PAS-3! And that was the last time I had tone controls. As a card-carrying audiophile, I wanted just what the engineer had inscribed on the recording, with as little change as possible (read: high fidelity).

Tone controls? I ripped them out of my Dyna PAS-3! And that was the last time I had tone controls. As a card-carrying audiophile, I wanted just what the engineer had inscribed on the recording, with as little change as possible (read: high fidelity).

Tone controls? I ripped them out of my Dyna PAS-3! And that was the last time I had tone controls. As a card-carrying audiophile, I wanted just what the engineer had inscribed on the recording, with as little change as possible (read: high fidelity).

Tone controls? I ripped them out of my Dyna PAS-3! And that was the last time I had tone controls. As a card-carrying audiophile, I wanted just what the engineer had inscribed on the recording, with as little change as possible (read: high fidelity).