LATEST ADDITIONS

The holiday retailing picture looks promising, according to several recent reports. Both the <A HREF="http://www.cemacity.org/">Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association</A> and the <A HREF="http://www.riaa.com/">Recording Industry Association of America</A> were predicting up seasons after mid-year numbers came in higher than expected. Overall, retail sales were up 0.6% in November, reported the <A HREF="http://www.wsj.com/"><I>Wall Street Journal</I></A> on Monday, December 14.

A continuation of last week's question. Equipment reviews are <I>Stereophile</I>'s bread and butter. Do they strike a good balance between technical details and subjective impressions? Are the measurements, charts, and graphs useful to you?

<I>This series of articles was initially written (in slightly different form), as a paper presented at the 103rd Audio Engineering Society Convention, New York, September 1997. The preprint, "Loudspeakers: What Measurements Can Tell Us&mdash;And What They Can't Tell Us!," AES Preprint 4608, is available from the AES, 60 East 42nd Street, Room 2520, New York, NY 10165-0075. The </I>AES internet site, <A HREF="http://www.aes.org">www.aes.org</A&gt; <I>, offers a secure transaction page for credit-card orders.</I>

For those of you who need yet another Jimi fix, Experience Hendrix/MCA will release a 2-CD collection of music from Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys concerts at New York City's Fillmore East, which took place on December 31, 1969 and January 1, 1970. Drawn from the guitarist's four legendary performances, the new package will contain 16 tracks, 13 of which have never before been released in any form, with two additional tracks making their CD debut. <I>Jimi Hendrix: Live at the Fillmore East</I> will be released on CD and 180gm vinyl (three LPs) on February 9.

When going up against the consumer electronics industry, the <A HREF="http://208.240.92.66/">Recording Industry Association of America</A> has no problem keeping the upstarts in their place. In fact, with recent battles over DAT and CD-R, they appear able to kill or mortally wound entire formats at will. But fighting within the computer universe is a whole new story, as recently proved by the RIAA's stumble with Diamond Multimedia and their portable MP3 device (<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10324/">see related stories</A>).

E<I>ditor's Note: This item is an excerpt from an e-mail received from Russia late last week. It's noteworthy that the US Congress has spent hundreds of days and more than $50 million investigating the President's adolescent shenanigans, while elsewhere in the world serious trouble is afoot. Leonid Korostyshevski is a computer consultant and audiophile in the university town of Saratov, on the Volga river 600 miles east of Moscow. His <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10131/">previous dispatch</A> appeared here in March.----BW</I>

With the reality of digital television now almost within our grasp, manufacturers of big-screen sets must feel like sky-divers in free fall. Until the 'chute opens with the snap of digital displays finally hitting the stores, the market for large, expensive, conventional rear-projection models might appear to be controlled by nothing but the force of gravity. In a highly unscientific survey, I asked a few dealers around the country whether big-screen television sales were down and whether consumers seemed to be waiting for the coming of the first digital sets. The answer to both questions was a uniform and unequivocal <I>yes</I>.