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John Atkinson wires up a pair of Gershman">http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/704gershman">Gershman Acoustics Opera Sauvage loudspeakers, noting, "'Mellow' was the word I used to describe my first impression of the Opera Sauvage's balance, and nothing I experienced throughout my auditioning persuaded me that that impression was mistaken."

iTunes is proving every day that some music fans love to procure music through the Internet. On the other hand, audiophiles often complainhttp://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?310">complain; about the poor sound of the "CD quality" compressed files that Apple and others offer for download at similar prices to those of their uncompressed CD counterparts.

Noted jazz recording engineer David Baker died unexpectedly on July 14 in Rochester, NY.

Like most Americans, US audiophiles have little idea how difficult life can be for people in other countries. Imagine facing official censure for possessing some innocuous pop music, or taking 12 years to accumulate the complete works of one of your favorite rock groups. That was life in the old Soviet Union for Stereophile colleague Leonid Korostyshevski, who flew to Istanbul from Moscow on short notice, so we could spend a few days together prior to my embarking on a sailing trip in the eastern Mediterranean. The visit cemented a long-distance friendship established through numberless emails. It was also an in-depth education.

The oldest verified surviving recording is an 1878 tin cylinder of a talking clock (you can hear it at tinfoil.com/cm-0101.htmhttp://tinfoil.com/cm-0101.htm">tinfoil.com/cm-0101.htm;). There's just one problem, however; the recording's surface noise is so pronounced that you can barely hear the featured attraction. Chalk it up to age, imperfect recording media, poor storage, or even to the ravages of mold, but the facts remain the same—we're in danger of losing our audio patrimony: the hundreds of thousands of historical recordings from the dawn of recording.

Since it has been five years since the debut of SACD, one might think that the debate as to where it fits within the audiophile food chain would have been put to rest. But as with most things audio, reality conspires to make rational comparisons between formats tough. One is never sure if two releases on different formats have been rendered from the same source, or, as">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11649/">as we discovered with the recent Dark Side of the Moon hybrid SACD, from completely different masters.

Stereophile's John Atkinson teams up with world-renowned recording engineer Tony Faulkner to create a landmark Mozart recording that has just been released simultaneously on hybrid SACD/CD, and LP. In Project">http://www.stereophile.com/musicrecordings/804k622">Project K622, JA recounts the entire process, noting, "The upbeat is the most magic moment in classical music making."