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Dolby">http://www.dolby.com">Dolby Laboratories was demonstrating its new Advanced">http://www.aac-audio.com">Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) consumer encoder, which the company says complements its professional AAC encoder, at this year's New York AES Convention. Dolby says it will license the encoder to enable "high-quality AAC encoding" for CD-rippers, hard disk–based jukebox products, Internet-based music distribution systems, portable players, and other digital audio products aimed at the consumer market.

Sam Tellig loves 'em and consistently sings their high-quality/low-buck praises as a cheapskate favorite ($6.99 per CD!). And now, classical music label Naxos">http://www.naxos.com">Naxos of America is blazing new paths with its announcement last week that it and Liquid">http://www.liquidaudio.com">Liquid Audio have inked an agreement to digitally distribute downloads of selected Naxos recordings to leading retail and music web sites in the Liquid Music Network.

While audiophiles obsess about extracting another iota of resolution from our already high-rez systems and recordings, the rest of the world is going crazy for portable music.

With worldwide demand for semiconductors lower than it has been in many years, Philips">http://www.philips.com">Philips Electronics NV has announced an organizational streamlining that may cost 4000 workers their jobs.

George Harrison, the youngest Beatle, and the least comfortable with the band's renown, died November 29 at 58, following a battle with cancer. Harrison, one of rock's most distinctive guitarists, was also a songwriter and singer of the first water. It could be said that it was his misfortune to be the third songwriter in a band that featured the two most significant tunesmiths of his era. On the other hand, without Harrison's unique, exquisitely tasteful, musically wide-ranging guitar playing—which, in its consistent submission to the requirements of the individual songs, rarely drew attention to itself—Lennon and McCartney might have just been another band.

Purported financial">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11074/">financial difficulties haven't prevented Tower">http://www.towerrecords.com">Tower Records from developing a massive new flagship store in Los Angeles. Occupying more than 33,000 square feet, the new store in the renovated Sherman Oaks Galleria features a "state-of-the-art" performance stage and a Super Audio CD demonstration room.

Record label attempts at restricting the potential uses of their CDs have hit another bump in the antipiracy road. Music label BMG had announced earlier this year that it would try to find ways to restrict its CDs, in an effort to stem piracy and the trading of MP3 files. But those plans appear to have backfired, so far.