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After a frustrating late-night duel with evil recording gremlins, JA called it a day. But the next morning he was back at the controls to record Canadian pianist Robert Silverman for what would subsequently become one of Stereophile's popular audiophile recordings: Intermezzo: Works for Piano by Brahms. In Intermezzo:">http://www.stereophile.com//musicrecordings/311/">Intermezzo: The Santa Barbara Sessions, writer Thomas Norton runs down the key events that finally resulted in a completed analog master tape, with engineering from Water Lily Acoustics' Kavichandran Alexander.

Despite the best efforts of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan to extend an unprecedented economic boom, the nation's economy is slowing. The slowdown is causing negative repercussions in many sectors—including the music retailing business and consumer electronics manufacturing.

Sony may be pretending that DVD-Audio doesn't exist, and Panasonic may be in denial about SACD, but a new chip from Texas">http://www.ti.com">Texas Instruments just might help bring the rival formats a little closer together in consumer living rooms and professional recording studios alike.

Last week, American">http://www.atcsd.com">American Technology Corp. (ATC) announced that three additional patents on its loudspeaker technologies have been granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (see previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10616/">previous story). The company also announced that it has acquired the rights to "strategic" patents from the former Carver Corp. covering a variety of audio reproduction and amplifier technologies.

As Michael Fremer puts it, "In analog, it's the little things that count, and Rega's upgrade of the basic Planar 3 design to the Planar 25 can only be described as visibly 'small.' But the sonic improvements I heard during my first encounter with the $1275 arm/'table combo were audibly big." Fremer takes a close look at and listen to the Rega">http://www.stereophile.com//analogsourcereviews/309/">Rega Planar 25 turntable for Stereophile readers and attempts to reveal all of its secrets. Sam Tellig adds his two cents' worth.

Drummer Billy Higgins started his remarkable career backing up R&B musicians such as Amos Milburn and Bo Diddley around the LA area before embarking on his jazz path with the Jazz Messengers (led by Don Cherry and saxophonist James Clay) and Dexter Gordon. But it was his association with Ornette Coleman, starting in the mid 1950s, that electrified the jazz world and made him a force to reckon with. His first recordings, with Coleman and Red Mitchell, were released in 1958. In 1959, he performed with both Coleman in New York and Thelonious Monk in San Francisco, and from that point on, he never stopped recording or touring.

Price-fixing by major record labels isn't confined to the United States. The music industry's "Big Five" (Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, EMI Group PLC, and the Bertelsmann Music Group) are now under the scrutiny of European Union antitrust investigators, who are looking into the possibility that the companies may have colluded to keep CD prices artificially high in Europe. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and music industry agreed to settlehttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10744/">settle; the American version of the issue in May 2000.