LATEST ADDITIONS

On May 16, Amazon.com announced that it would launch an online digital music store "later this year" offering "millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format from more than 12,000 record labels." EMI, which recently announced that it would partner with the iTunes Media Store to release premium DRM-free MP3 downloads there, "is the latest addition to the store." Amazon claims that every song and album in the Amazon.com digital music store will be available exclusively as unfettered MP3 files.

When audiophiles speak of the "Golden Age" of audio components, they almost always are talking about amplifiers and preamplifiers, not loudspeakers. While a very few speaker models have stood the test of time&mdash;among them the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/361">BBC LS3/5a</A>, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/914">Vandersteen 2</A>, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/artdudleylistening/706listening">original Quad electrostatic</A> and the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/416">Quad ESL-63</A>, some of the Magnepans, and the Klipschorn&mdash;almost no one would disagree that, taken en masse, the speakers of today outperform not just those of the 1960s and 1970s but even those of the 1980s and 1990s. The advent of low-cost, computerized test equipment, high-quality, inexpensive measuring microphones, and persuasive research into what measured parameters matter most to listeners who are listening for a neutral-sounding, uncolored loudspeaker (footnote 1), has led to an almost across-the-board improvement in speaker sound quality (footnote 2).

The devil's in the details, so here's one detail you should know going in: The El Diablo, a deceptively modest-looking, casket-like, compact, three-way loudspeaker from Danish firm Peak Consult, will cost you a penny less than $65,000/pair. Why? Yes, the dollar's continued slide has alarmingly driven up the price of imported audio gear, but even so...

For a word that first appeared in print only 35 years ago, prequel has a lot of impact—if only in a commercial sense. The television series Smallville has become a staple of American broadcasting. Film producers gambled millions on the chance that audiences would want to know what happened when Batman began. And while moviegoers have turned their backs on the apparently awful Hannibal Rising, the book of the same name is doing brisk business indeed.

"When you're hungry, eat. When you're tired, nap in a sunbeam. When you go to the vet's, pee on your owner."
<BR>
Gary Smith

The best rock songs ever, according to the prince of darkness&mdash;whose band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, I am so going to see June 1.

Is it possible that growing wheat locally and baking and selling it nearby could be the answer for decaying rural communities? Not to mention that vile white sponge we now call bread. . . .