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In a gesture that mirrors a petitionhttp://www.eff.org/share/petition/">petition; the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) is presenting to Congress, Flowerburger Records is circulating a petitionhttp://www.flowerburger.com/">petition; requesting that the British Parliament and the BPI, Britain's recording industry trade group, stop the lawsuits against music fans and develop constructive alternatives aimed at compensating artists.

A highlight of recent Home Entertainment Shows has been the Sunday afternoon "Analog Clinic" presented by Stereophile senior editor Michael Fremer. Michael, who writes about vinyl playback every month in his "Analog Corner" column, spends an hour showing Show attendees how to set up a turntable and how to optimize the tonearm geometry. To judge by the attendance at Home Entertainment 2006, held last month in Los Angeles, this is a popular subject these days.

We have lost a great artist. Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, 52, who had previously triumphed over breast cancer, died at her home in Santa Fe on July 3. While The New York Times obituary did not specify the cause of death, other reports suggest she died from cancer, leading to speculation that the claims of back trouble and gall bladder inflammation that led to a string of cancellations in the past few years were related to a recurrence of the disease.

Bob Stuart, chairman and co-founder of Meridian, will deliver a lecture on active loudspeakers to the UK Section of the Audio Engineering Society in London on Tuesday, July 11. Although Bob has been a champion of active speakers for 30 years, he has, surprisingly, delivered only one previous paper on the subject, at the AES UK Conference earlier this year. In this lecture he will expand on that presentation and be able to discuss the topic more fully with the audience.

After I decided to join">http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/352">join Stereophile as its editor in the spring of 1986, I took a road trip through Europe. The ostensible reason for the trip was to attend a hi-fi show in Lucerne, Switzerland, but the reality was that, faced with the transatlantic dislocation, I wanted to touch base with places that had meant much to me over the preceding years. I took the train to Paris, where I spent a day taking what might have been my last look at the Impressionist paintings (then at the Jeu de Paume gallery, now at the Musée d'Orsay), then drove the rest of the way to Lucerne with KEF's then marketing manager David Inman.

I was saddened to hear of the untimely death of David Smith, vice-president of audio engineering and R&D at Sony Music Studios in New York. David, who was 55, died Saturday June 17, at the home of his mother on Long Island.

It's baaack!