Larger than a stocking stuffer, Musical Fidelity's X-Ray<SUP>v3</SUP> CD player is nevertheless quite compact and would be very nice to find under the Christmas tree.

"A few of us felt that we were the proverbial voices in the wilderness for a long time." So writes Gary Jacobson, whose <A HREF="http://www.quadesl.org">Quad ESL website</A>, is my favorite of the many good ones out there.

"A few of us felt that we were the proverbial voices in the wilderness for a long time." So writes Gary Jacobson, whose <A HREF="http://www.quadesl.org">Quad ESL website</A>, is my favorite of the many good ones out there.

Were I trying to make a living by giving piano recitals, David Stanhope's new CD, <I>A Virtuoso Recital</I> (Tall Poppies TP184), just might tempt me to wash down a fistful of pills with a bottle of Scotch. The saving grace being that Stanhope seems to have enough things to occupy himself with in his native Australia. The risk of his showing up in New York City and playing a recital, thereby giving a lot of people existential crises and sleepless nights, seems remote.

Were I trying to make a living by giving piano recitals, David Stanhope's new CD, <I>A Virtuoso Recital</I> (Tall Poppies TP184), just might tempt me to wash down a fistful of pills with a bottle of Scotch. The saving grace being that Stanhope seems to have enough things to occupy himself with in his native Australia. The risk of his showing up in New York City and playing a recital, thereby giving a lot of people existential crises and sleepless nights, seems remote.

In an article published on June 28 on the website <I>Slyck.com</I>, a popular site dedicated to news and activism surrounding P2P networks, writer Thomas Mennecke contends that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has <A HREF="http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1237 ">retooled </A> its "strategy of launching a continuous barrage of monthly lawsuits aimed at approximately 750 individuals," a policy that has resulted in more than 18,000 suits since it was instituted three years ago.

Bob Stuart, chairman and co-founder of Meridian, will deliver a lecture on active loudspeakers to the UK Section of the Audio Engineering Society in London on Tuesday, July 11. Although Bob has been a champion of active speakers for 30 years, he has, surprisingly, delivered only one previous paper on the subject, at the AES UK Conference earlier this year. In this lecture he will expand on that presentation and be able to discuss the topic more fully with the audience.

After I decided to <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/352">join <I>Stereophile</I></A> as its editor in the spring of 1986, I took a road trip through Europe. The ostensible reason for the trip was to attend a hi-fi show in Lucerne, Switzerland, but the reality was that, faced with the transatlantic dislocation, I wanted to touch base with places that had meant much to me over the preceding years. I took the train to Paris, where I spent a day taking what might have been my last look at the Impressionist paintings (then at the Jeu de Paume gallery, now at the Mus&#233;e d'Orsay), then drove the rest of the way to Lucerne with KEF's then marketing manager David Inman.