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Artists' groups are celebrating what they hope will be more than a symbolic victory over the recording industry in the wake of legislation signed by President Clinton the last week of October. Known as "The Works Made for Hire and Copyright Corrections Act," the repeal negates a provision that was inserted into last year's "Satellite Home Viewer Act" at the insistence of the Recording">http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America, designating musical recordings as "works for hire." Such a designation catergorizes a musical recording as a commodity that can be purchased at a fixed price, such as a table built by a furniture craftsman, rather than as a performance subject to syndication and royalty fees.

Clogs in the snow. Photo: Tamara Bogolasky.

Saturday, March 12, 7:30pm: Clogs, Shara Worden, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus will perform at Merkin Concert Hall (129 West 67th Street, New York). The performance is part of Merkin’s inaugural Ecstatic Music Festival. Stereophile readers who have enjoyed John Atkinson’s 2007 recording, Attention Screen: Live at Merkin Hall (available here), will be familiar with the rich, inviting sound of the space.

On December 16, Congressmen James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) introduced HR">http://static.publicknowledge.org/pdf/HR-4569-DTCSA-Analog-Hole.pdf">HR 4569, a bill "to require certain analog conversion devices to preserve digital content security measures"—in other words, to mandate that electronic devices and software manufactured after a yet-to-be-specified date respond to a copy protection system or watermark embedded in a video signal and pass that along when converting the signal to analog or vice versa. It also mandates copy protection for analog signals. This is referred to as "plugging the analog hole," since analog signals, even those converted from protected high-definition digital sources, are currently "in the clear" or open for copying. (Standard-definition signals can be protected by systems like Macrovision, but no such protection exists for high-definition signals.)

Gone are the days of blacks and grays. Thanks in large part to the new face of Wilson Audio, color reigned supreme in Audio Reference Munich's impressive Atrium spread.

Bill Parrish of GTT Audio calls it "the best." Jonathan Halpern of Tone Imports describes it as "the most well-organized, well-attended show, with the greatest number of products I've never heard or seen before." Peter McGrath of Wilson Audio says "It has risen to be the most significant showcase of high-end technologies: a major, major show." And our own Michael Fremer says it's "where you go to confirm that audio is a serious, healthy, and growing business."

The object of their praise is the Munich High End show, which runs from May 15 through May 18. . .

Napster may rise from the dead and live again, this time as a commercial venture.

Command AV's Jeff Fox was running two rigs at CAF, including a large scale assemblage in the Democracy suite, where the sound matched the beauty of the hi-fi. Jeff's setup included the day-glow red J.Sikora Standard MAX Special Editon turntable ($19,995) and J.Sikora KV MAX 12" Tonearm ($14,500) mounted with an Aidas Mammoth Gold Cartridge ($8650). From thence the signal ran to a Doshi Audio Evolution phono stage ($20,995). Digital front-end duties were handled by an Aurender N30SA server ($25,000), a Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Series 3 ($28,000), and a Berkeley Audio Design Alpha USB Series 2 digital interface ($2495).