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We Get Letters Department: Stereophile editor John Atkinson recently received the following email from Tony Fisch, the director of corporate development at MusicGiants: "MusicGiants (www.musicgiants.com) will be the first company to offer high-fidelity downloads from all record labels. MusicGiants uses Microsoft WMA 'lossless' codec (450kbps) to preserve 100% of the music. The result is music that sounds just like the artist intended. Finally, real music downloads up to 1100kbps. MusicGiants' downloads will be $1.29 per track, and $15.29 per album.

It's no wonder the public is confused about audio formats and sound quality, Consider claims such as the recent "major breakthrough" announcement concerning two audio technologies from Creative Technology, a company best known for making PC peripherals (most notably the Sound Blaster audio cards).

Let us pause for a moment to reflect on the passing of one of hi-fi’s most venerable components. For 30 years, Rega’s Planar 2—recently, simply known as the P2—has provided countless hi-fi enthusiasts with their first taste of the potential that the vinyl disc has to offer. Now Rega has decided to stop making it.

"Well it has finally happened," esteemed classical recording engineer Tony">http://www.auracle.com/greenroom/">Tony Faulkner wrote me in a recent email. "I have engineered my first live webcast and MP3 download-only release."

"Some say it dates back to 1927, when Gramophone magazine's editor thundered that electrical reproduction was a step backward in sound quality," said the promotional copy for Home Entertainment 2005's opening-day event, "The Great Debate: Subjectivism on Trial." It continued: "But whenever it started, the Great Debate between 'subjectivists,' who hear differences among audio components, and 'objectivists,' who tend to ascribe such differences to the listeners' overheated imaginations, rages just as strongly in the 21st century as it did in the 20th." On April 29 at the Manhattan Hilton, Stereophile editor John Atkinson and one of the Internet's most vocal audio skeptics, Arnold B. Krueger, debated mano a mano where the line should be drawn between honest reporting and audio delusion.

I've been thinking about women. All weekend long. While that, by itself, is nothing unusual for me, here at Home Entertainment 2005, I''ve been thinking particularly about the small number of female enthusiasts within the hobby of high-end audio.

No, we really weren't feeling kind of seasick, but the crowd definitely called out for more—and at HE2005, more is what we usually got.