On April 8, <A HREF="http://www.nordicdms.com/">Nordic Entertainment Worldwide</A> announced that it has adopted ARIS Technologies' MusiCode audio watermarking system. The Napa, California-based company operates the Downloadable Music Site, one of the Internet's most extensive music archives. MusiCode is an attempt to discourage piracy by embedding signals in recorded music, which can later be extracted for tracking the recording&#198;s origin.

Recently, Sound Advice, Inc., a specialty retailer of high-end consumer electronics, announced plans to open five to six stores in Florida over the next 18 months. The company expects that two to three of the stores will be in operation by the end of this calendar year, with the balance to be opened in 1999. Sound Advice is also exploring other ideas, such as smaller-format specialty stores in upscale malls and other high-end retail locations that feature high-quality brand names.

Recently, <A HREF="http://www.analog.com/">Analog Devices</A> announced the world&#198;s first High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) decoder chip with 32-bit internal precision. The ADSP-21061 SHARC programmable digital signal processor will enable HDCD decoding to be incorporated into a wide variety of consumer audio and home-theater products, according to an AD press release dated March 26. The SHARC DSP can perform up to 150 million operations per second, and includes one megabit of onboard memory, six DMA channels, and two serial ports. The highly integrated decoder is claimed to perform HDCD decoding without external memory.

"Digital audio quality at analog prices." That&#198;s how <A HREF="http://www.cirrus.com/">Cirrus Logic</A>'s Crystal Semiconductor division introduced a chip that may bring a new level of audio performance to a much wider audience. On April 6, Crystal announced its CS4334, an 8-pin, small-outline D/A converter. The 24-bit CS4334 will support sampling rates of up to 96kHz, and is being marketed as a low-cost, high-quality solution for computer, automotive, and portable audio applications, as well as DVD systems and set-top converter boxes. Crystal claims the new chip is the industry&#198;s smallest delta-sigma DAC.

<B>BILL FRISELL: <I>Gone, Just Like A Train</I></B><BR> Bill Frisell, electric & acoustic guitars; Viktor Krauss, bass; Jim Keltner, drums, percussion<BR> Nonesuch 79479-2 (CD). 1998. Lee Townsend, prod.; Judy Clapp, eng. AAD. TT: 69:58<BR> Performance <B>*****</B><BR> Sonics *****</B>

High-end journal <I>The Abso!ute Sound</I>, long rumored to be circling the drain, has been officially revived. According to a press release dated March 24, <I>TAS</I> will be operated under a new company, Absolute Multimedia, owned by Tom Martin, a vice-president at Dell Computer. Martin has reportedly arranged serious financing for the new venture, which will be based in Austin, Texas.

Not long after the single-disc CD player was introduced, the multidisc changer followed, with products from companies like <A HREF="http://www.sony.com">Sony</A&gt; and <A HREF="http://www.pioneerelectronics.com">Pioneer</A&gt;. Shortly after the changer was introduced, it became the most popular version of the new hardware format. In the past eight years, changers have consistently outsold single-disc machines. The high-end market was characteristically slow to embrace changers, but companies like <A HREF="http://www.calaudio.com">California Audio Labs</A> have been successful in this category with products like the CL-10, a five-disc carousel changer.

At the recent <A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com">WinHEC '98</A>, <A HREF="http://www.nec.com">NEC Electronics Inc.</A> made available prototype sample units of 1394-to-POF (plastic optical fiber) repeater boxes that extend transmission of video, audio, and textual data over long distances via plastic optical fiber and copper media. NEC Electronics, one of the first companies to demonstrate this technology over plastic optical fiber and copper and wireless media, is also one of the first to demonstrate transmission speeds of 200Mbits/s over plastic optical fiber.

A few nights ago, John Atkinson and I played host to a speaker designer and a turntable manufacturer. We were all chewing over the 1998 Consumer Electronics Show, talking about different systems we'd heard there and speculating as to which designs would be around for the long haul. The speaker designer said he'd heard no truly bad sound at the Show. Nods all around the table&mdash;none of us had. The turntable manufacturer asked if any of us could recall hearing <I>any</I> spectacularly bad products recently. We all shook our heads.