Mastering engineer Denny Purcell let out a long sigh. "Does anyone in this room really believe that any of this is going to do any good?" he asked. Of the eight or nine people—each with decades of experience in the music and/or audio industries—hanging out at Georgetown Masters Studios in Nashville for SDMI's Phase II listening tests, no one said "Yes." The consensus: The watermarking issue will probably be dead and forgotten within a year.

The most common complaint about record companies: CD prices are too high. In fact, many blame Napster's runaway success on the insistence of "greedy labels" on pricing discs at $15 or higher. Apparently BMG Direct, a division of <A HREF="http://www.bmg.com/">BMG Entertainment</A>, has put two and two together and found it equals $9.99.

L<I>ast night I saw him on the stair&mdash;<BR>the little man who wasn't there.<BR>I saw him there again today;<BR>oh, how I wish he'd go away.</I>

Kalman Rubinson gives a long listen to the 1998 <I>Stereophile</I> Editor's Choice winner, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/278/">Z-Systems rdp-1 digital preamplifier</A>. Like many audiophiles, Kal eschewed tone controls in favor of the purist approach&mdash;until he met the rdp-1. As he puts it: "Now, the time has come for DSP to give the audiophile some powerful tools to tailor frequency response and to correct faults in the recording."

<B>EMMYLOU HARRIS: <I>Red Dirt Girl</I></B><BR> Nonesuch 79616-2 (CD). 2000. Malcolm Burn, prod., eng. AAD? TT: 55:58<BR> Performance <B>****?</B><BR> Sonics <B>****</B>

According to a report just released by the <A HREF="http://www.narm.com">National Association of Recording Merchandisers</A> (NARM), Digital distribution&mdash;particularly streaming technology&mdash;will seriously disrupt the music industry, but has the potential to "benefit all segments of the business if companies can leverage their traditional strengths and create compelling consumer value propositions."

In an unusual move, chipmaker <A HREF="http://www.cirruslogic.com/">Cirrus Logic</A> has purchased patents for Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technology owned by <A HREF="http://www2.bwspeakers.com/">B&W Loudspeakers</A>, a leading UK manufacturer. The patents will be used in combination with current Cirrus Logic technology in a new line of digital amplifiers, according to an October 2 news release.

You want to grow your market, you've got to plant some seeds. The <A HREF="http://www.ce.org/">Consumer Electronics Association</A> (CEA) is doing just that with the <A HREF="http://www.buzznet.org/">BuzzNet 2000</A> tour, a traveling educational event that will hit college campuses beginning this month, as reported <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10859/">last week</A>.

Warner Music Group may have just announced its first DVD-Audio titles (see <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10861/">related story</A>), but an upstart independent label is claiming the first DVD-A discs actually available for sale. In an attempt to establish itself as the leader in the new DVD-Audio format, 5.1 Entertainment Group's <A HREF="http://www.silverlinerecords.com/">Silverline Records</A> says it has begun shipping the first commercially available 24-bit/96kHz DVD-Audio disc, <I>Swingin' for the Fences</I>, by Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band.