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The early bird catches the worm, but the well-warmed playback system is another thing altogether: So it was when I visited New York’s Stereo Exchange on the morning of April 13, mere minutes after they opened their doors for the day. Nevertheless, the ever-genial David Wasserman and his staff hit the ground running, cheek-to-jowl with eager customers and representatives from 11 equipment suppliers, whose presence had at least something to do with the New York Audio and AV Show.

Echo.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) maintains a websitehttp://www.eff.org">website; that we have found invaluable for keeping up with news about technological restrictions to information and fair use. Last week, we were directed to the EFF's new User's">http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/guide/">User's Guide to DRM in Online Music, which we recommend to everyone still undecided about buying into one of the online providers.

The Andra, Stereophile's 1997 Product of the Year, will soon be back. So will the Rosa, the Fontaine, the Isabel, and the Ivy Reference—in fact, the full line of EgglestonWorkshttp://www.egglestonworks.com/">EgglestonWorks; loudspeakers will be shipping soon to dealers, now that the company has been rescued from extinction. EgglestonWorks had been in legal limbo for most of the year as creditors wrangled over its future.

A happy 35,000-foot-high encounter with Jim Thompson and John Callery of EgglestonWorks led to the unveiling of the new Oso loudspeaker ($12,895/pair). Mated with the belated show premiere of the same Doshi Evolution monoblocks ($44,000/pair, below) that graced the cover of our May 2021 issue, as well as an Innuos Statement music server and J. Sikora turntable ($21,000 without arms—see Michael Fremer's review in the forthcoming July issue), the speakers produced lovely sound.

Several class-action">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10750/">class-action lawsuits have been thrown against the music industry in the wake of its admission that it engaged in a price-fixing scheme known as Minimum Advertised Pricing, or MAP. The policy arose as a response to widespread CD price wars in the early 1990s that drove prices of some CDs below $10 each, and was intended to prevent mass-market merchandisers from offering CDs below cost as lures to pull customers into stores. The MAP policy was officially discontinued after the Federal Trade Commission reached">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10744/">reached a settlement with the industry in May of this year.

You may have noticed recent news items about proposals to deregulate the electrical power industry. You may have received solicitations to sign on with some start-up utility you never heard of, promising 10% to 40% reductions in your electrical bill. The model for this deregulation---if it comes to pass---is the long-distance telephone industry.