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Efforts to restrict the ways consumers use music they have purchased continue unabated. SunnCommhttp://www.sunncomm.com">SunnComm; (along with its sales and marketing arm MediaMaxhttp://www.mediamaxtechnology.com">MediaMax;) has announced that its "newest patent-pending passive technology makes it even more difficult to bypass or 'hack' the copy protection structure contained on the MediaMax CDs."

The last few weeks have been a roller-coaster ride for CD copy-restriction developer SunnComm. The company was riding high in early September when it was announcedhttp://www.stereophile.com/news/11734/">announced; that BMG and Arista had chosen its MediaMax CD-3 Technology to restrict how discs are used.

Only as I was leaving this room did Theresa Merchant tell me that when she, her husband Sunil, and the Sunny Components team first encountered the abysmal acoustics in this room, they thought all was lost. Thanks to the set-up acumen of David Ellington, AudioQuest Director of Sales for Independent Dealers, and a bunch of acoustic paneling, the room was a major success.

More than 70 producers, engineers, and representatives from consumer and professional equipment manufacturers, record companies, and recording studios recently came together in Europe to discuss new ways to promote and establish Super Audio CD. After a two-day conference in London, the attendees say they have agreed to establish the Super Audio Forum to foster a "supportive environment for the exchange of knowledge and marketing information, as well as providing a platform for industry-wide collaboration."

Scott Walker Audio will host a three-day Super Speaker Showcase at its Keller, Texas showroom on September 26-28. Hours are 12–5 pm CT each day.

Don't be fooled by Definitive Audio of Seattle's intentionally understated exterior. In my five years covering the annual four-hour Music Matters showcases, I have never heard such stellar sound from the store's six showrooms and head-fi listening area. In fact, four of the exhibits at Music Matters 14, held on Thursday March 7, together offered the finest sound I have ever experienced at any show or store event. And I'll swear by that statement.

Long-simmering disputes about peer-to-peer file sharing, or P2P, will finally come to a boil sometime next year. On Friday, December 10, the US Supreme Court agreed to examine whether online services Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks, Inc. are liable for copyright infringement. Both services enable users to share music and other forms of copyrighted material, and both derive revenue from advertising.

One of the drawbacks of the new DualDiscs released by the major labels to date is a lack of consistency when it comes to portability—the ability to easily transfer the music to any device the listener prefers, such as an iPod, media server, PC, or MP3 player, or to make a back-up CD for car use.

The Swedes have found a new way to kill time on those long, cold Scandinavian winter nights. On February 7, Swedish">http://www.sr.se">Swedish Radio (SR) announced that it had begun multichannel test transmissions from the Sirius 2 satellite, utilizing DTS's">http://www.dtsonline.com">DTS's Coherent Acoustics compression/ decompression algorithm. The tests are intended to run until the end of April 2003.

DVD-Audio and SACD are offering record companies a chance to re-release their back-catalogs of "classic" material once again. But the results will not necessarily resemble the CD re-releases of the last two decades. Artists, producers, and labels now have an opportunity to go beyond the standard "re-mastered for (insert new format here)" process when updating an older title for DVD-Audio or SACD. For better or worse, they can entirely remix the master tapes for multi-channel surround sound.