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Last August, we reportedhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/10515/">reported; that brick-and-mortar retailer Tweeter Home Entertainment Group had aligned itself with online retailer Cyberian Outpost to leverage each company's respective strengths, both on- and offline. The trend continues as, last week, brick-and-mortar retailer Harvey">http://www.harveyonline.com">Harvey Electronics announced that it has reached an "agreement in principle" with CoolAudio.comhttp://www.coolaudio.com">CoolAudio.com; (see previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10479/">previous story) to merge the two companies through an exchange of common stock.

The quest for new speaker technologies has resulted in some novel approaches to the reproduction of sound, as witnessed by products announced in the last few years by NXThttp://www.nxt.co.uk/">NXT; and 1 . . . Ltd. (See previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10234/">previous story.) Some of Stereophile's readers may also recall that, back in May 1996, American">http://www.atcsd.com">American Technology Corp. shook things up in the audio world by announcing what the company described as its "breakthough" new technology, the much-debated HyperSonic Sound (HSS). This was followed up in February 1997, when ATC announced the introduction of its Stratified Field Technology SFT, which company literature touted as "a significant improvement over conventional loudspeakers."

One of the challenging attributes of the new DVD-Audio format is the ability to release music in high-resolution multichannel (four or more) sound. For some this will be a thorny issue: Can previously released recordings be remixed to take advantage of the extra channels without sounding gimmicky? Should classical and/or live recordings use the surround channels for concert-hall ambience? How long will it be until consumers even care about setting up their systems to take advantage of more than two full-bandwidth channels?

In his third installment of "Fine">http://www.stereophile.com//finetunes/173/">Fine Tunes," Jonathan Scull encourages readers to stick their heads in a corner. "Notice how strongly the bass loads up there, how exaggerated and out of control it sounds," he writes. With the help of Jeff Joseph, Scull also reveals a trick for dealing with square rooms.

The object of the audio game, as Stereophile founder J. Gordon Holt put it, is "to re-create original acoustic events as accurately as possible." That goal has driven engineers to extraordinary lengths, improving every link in the recording and playback chain. Most such improvements are incremental, but their cumulative effect is the sometimes astounding level of sonic realism available today from even moderately priced equipment.

It is with regret that we announce to Stereophile's readers the closing of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, on November 19, 1999. Known to audiophiles since its inception in 1977, the company provided serious listeners with hundreds of remastered LPs, cassettes, and CDs.

In his second installment of "Fine">http://www.stereophile.com//finetunes/171/">Fine Tunes," Jonathan Scull writes: "I met a chap the other day whose wife said to me, 'Oh, you suffer from the same audiophile disease.' I hastened to inform her that I am the disease." But J-10 is also the cure, as he proves in this ode to building the perfect listening room.