A long, relaxing listening session can be good medicine. But I've never heard a doctor prescribe, "Listen to your favorite recording three times and call me in the morning." At least, not yet.

A long, relaxing listening session can be good medicine. But I've never heard a doctor prescribe, "Listen to your favorite recording three times and call me in the morning." At least, not yet.

A long, relaxing listening session can be good medicine. But I've never heard a doctor prescribe, "Listen to your favorite recording three times and call me in the morning." At least, not yet.

The entertainment industry's worst worry—copyright infringement—just got a lot worse. A consortium of 12 major high-technology companies has been organized to promote a rewritable DVD technology developed by the Pioneer Electronics Corporation, according to a May 9 press release from Tokyo.

Digital downloading is all the rage with the major record labels. <A HREF="http://www.emimusic.ca/">EMI Recorded Music</A>, a unit of <A HREF="http://www.emigroup.com/">EMI Group PLC</A>, announced May 10 that it will make some of its massive catalog available as digital downloads beginning this summer. More than 100 albums and 40 singles will be offered on a trial basis, according to a company press release dated May 10. EMI's musical spectrum covers every genre, including pop, rock, jazz, classical, Latin, Christian, country, rap/urban, and dance&mdash;a roster of approximately 1500 artists. Labels under the EMI umbrella include Capitol, Angel, Blue Note, EMI, Priority, and Virgin.

Music file&ndash;sharing service <A HREF="http://www.napster.com/">Napster Inc.</A> appears to be losing its fight against the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Record Industry Association of America</A>. On May 8, judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the US District Court in Northern California rejected two of Napster's key defenses: that it is a "mere conduit" of information, like a telephone network; and that it had made serious efforts to prevent "repeat offenders" from using the site. Telephone companies, Internet service providers, and other types of information services are exempt by law from being responsible for the information transmitted over their systems, provided they make reasonable attempts to control abuses. Napster doesn't qualify on either count, Judge Patel found.

With their simple circuits and low, even zero, levels of loop negative feedback, the sound quality of single-ended triode amplifiers is very dependent on the specific output tubes used. In "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//features/229/">In Search of the Perfect 300B Tube</A>," Peter van Willenswaard finds that not all tubes are created equal. Measured and auditioned in his survey of 300B power tubes are samples from Golden Dragon, JJ Electronics, KR Enterprise, Sovtek, Svetlana, Valve Art, and Western Electric. "If you want the best," sums up Mr. W, "there's only the . . . "&mdash;well, you'll have to read the article to find out!

Retail prices of compact discs are likely to drop in the coming months, thanks to a <A HREF="http://www.ftc.gov/">Federal Trade Commission</A> action ending an industry-wide price-support policy begun five years ago. On May 10, the FTC announced that it had reached an agreement with the "Big Five" of the music business&mdash;Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music, Seagram Ltd.'s Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, BMG Entertainment, and EMI Group PLC&mdash;that will effectively end the practice of "minimum advertised pricing" (MAP) instituted as a response to music-retailing price wars in the mid-1990s. Under MAP, retailers were forbidden to advertise CDs below an established minimum, at the risk of losing millions of promotional dollars from the record labels.

I can't resist reading about a company's flagship loudspeaker&mdash;the price-no-object product that embodies the most advanced ideas from a company's research and design department. Flagship loudspeakers tend to be large, heavy, and complex, and are designed to perform best in large rooms; often, each part of each driver is hand-built to the highest level of quality, with precisely tight tolerances. The cost? Don't ask. Some two-channel, audio-only flagships cost more than a BMW M5 sports sedan or a Porsche 911.