With its new Walkman music player, Sony has broken with its tradition of promoting its own proprietary formats. The NW-HD3 will let users import and export tracks in the MP3 format, a concession to the format's near-universal popularity and an admission of the failed appeal of Atrac, Sony's own music-playing software. MP3 compatibility should give the player appeal to a wider audience than a Sony-only machine.

Concord and Fantasy: Berkeley, CA&ndash;based Fantasy Records has been sold to Concord Records of Beverly Hills in a deal valued at $83 million, according to a December 4 report from <I>Billboard</I>. The music enterprise of film producer Saul Zaentz and partners, Fantasy is well known for its huge catalog of works by jazz greats Count Basie, John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, and Sarah Vaughan, as well as soul and blues stars the Dramatics, Isaac Hayes, Albert King, the Staple Singers, and Johnnie Taylor.

Mastering engineer Denny Purcell let out a long sigh. "Does anyone in this room believe that any of this is going to do any good?" he asked. Of the eight or nine people&mdash;each with decades of experience in the music and/or audio industries&mdash;hanging out at Georgetown Masters Studios for SDMI's Phase II listening tests this past October, not one said "Yes." The consensus: the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/2002awsi">watermarking issue</A> will probably be dead and forgotten within a year.

I've recently been rereading Mark Lane's and Donald Freed's 1970s screenplay <I>cum</I> novel, <I>Executive Action</I>, which develops the theory that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy between organized crime, expatriate Cuban Batistists, and Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex." Long predating Oliver Stone's <I>JFK</I>, the book is fascinating, convincing stuff, from authors who had done considerable research into what really happened in November 1963. But, like all conspiracy theories, it falls down on the hard rock of reality: the more people and organizations are involved in a conspiracy, the less likelihood there is of anything happening at all, let alone going according to plan.

Someone once said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Well, this month, we will see not one but <I>two</I> better mousetraps, in the form of Sony's and Philips' Super Audio CD and the DVD Forum's DVD-Audio. Both are intended to replace the humble CD, now in its seventeenth year; both offer higher-resolution digital audio; and both offer multiple channels. To accompany SACD, Sony's $5000 SCD-1 two-channel player is now on sale (and will be <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/180">reviewed</A&gt; in the November <I>Stereophile</I>), while Panasonic has announced October sale dates for two DVD-A players, the $1000 Panasonic DVD-A7 and the $1200 <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/300">Technics DVD-A10</A>.

Audiophiles have a mess on their hands. In a somewhat surreal press conference in May, a half dozen audio luminaries&mdash;representing Sony, Philips, and several titans of the high-end recording business&mdash;stood on a HI-FI '99 stage looking awkwardly at the audience.

"Do you have another DVD player?" asked Classic Records' Michael Hobson. As is usual in important demonstrations, Murphy's Law had struck with a vengeance. The prototype Muse DVD player Kevin Halverson had worked on most of the previous night was refusing to play the DVD Mike had placed in its tray.

As you can read in this month's "Industry Update" (pp.35 & 37), the two conglomerates who hitherto seemed driven to offer the world <I>two</I> competing standards for the forthcoming Digital Video Disc came to their senses. Instead of consumers being offered Toshiba/Warner/Matsushita's SD <I>and</I> Sony/Philips's MCD, there will be just one high-density 4.75" disc to take both video and audio data storage into the 21st century.

Tweeter's new look: Tweeter Home Entertainment Group is entering the first phase of a massive makeover&mdash;with redesigned stores and a new marketing approach emphasizing custom installation and media-server&ndash;based home-theater products. The company will de-emphasize individual components and pitch its services toward women, who make most decisions about home entertainment and home d&#233;cor. The company's pitch will be "We can untangle your mind," a reference to the widespread frustration with semi-compatible and often incomprehensible technologies. Over the next 18 months, Tweeter will consolidate its various regional chains under a single brand name, with a prototype 14,500 sq. ft. store in the Las Vegas suburb of Summerlin, NV to be launched at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES).