I had it all wrong. I assumed that the "SLP" in SLP-98P stood for <I>stereo line preamplifier</I>. But <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/399">Dennis Had</A>, Cary Audio's founder and chief designer, told me that it actually stands for <I>sweet little preamplifier</I>. In a day and age when <I>acme</I> is a word without meaning and the fighting Irish are neither, this strikes me as a risky marketing gambit&mdash;but one that may be effective if the name proves true.

Now is clearly crunch time for satellite radio. In the last year alone, over one million new subscribers have been added to front-runner <A HREF="http://www.xmradio.com">XM Satellite Radio</A>'s service, bringing its total to approximately 1.4 million. The company projects that it will reach a total of 2.4 million subscribers by the end of 2004, thus ensuring its survival.

This week we have two John Atkinson speaker reviews from the February 2004 issue. First, JA gets his hands on the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/204bw">B&W 705 loudspeaker</A>, commenting, "When I heard about the company's new 700 series of speakers, based on the technology featured in their cost-no-object Nautilus series but priced to sell in the real world, I asked to review the $1500/pair 705."

Contrary to popular assumption, music downloads and CD sales may reinforce each other. That's one reasonable interpretation of mid-February music industry statistics from the United Kingdom.

Pure technology developments don't often have an audiophile angle, but a February 9 announcement from <A HREF="http://www.inphase-tech.com">InPhase Technologies</A> caught our attention.

Quad: The Closest Approach
by Ken Kessler. Cambridge, England, UK: International Audio Group Ltd., 2003. Hardcover, 12" square, 215 pp. ISBN 0 954 57420 6.
Available from: Quad dealers or IAG America, 15 Walpole Park South, Walpole, MA 02801. Tel: (508) 850-3950.

<I>Five years: My brain hurts a lot.</I>&mdash;David Bowie

<I>Five years: My brain hurts a lot.</I>&mdash;David Bowie

Bob Reina has been doing more than his share of reviewing inexpensive speakers in the past couple of years. I thought it only fair to shoulder some of the load, therefore, by reviewing a small design that had sounded interesting when I heard it at a press preview, the Klipsch RB-15.