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Tony, a mechanic friend of mine, once ran down for me his "national characteristics" theory of automobile engineering. Germans, he said, love precision engineering but don't take repair into account, so their engines are always placed in wells so perfectly proportioned that skinned knuckles are inevitable. British cars, he said, are marketed to a nation of tinkerers, hence the existence of dual carburetors. And Italian cars? "Well, let's just say they all resemble espresso makers." <I>He</I> said it&mdash;and he <I>was</I> the proverbial Fiat mechanic named Tony.

All right, it's time for a pop quiz in Loudspeaker Design 101. Answer the following, and justify your answer.

Let's forget about buying re-releases or back-filling an artist's catalog for a moment, what is the <I>primary</I> way you discover brand-new music to buy?

Harmonia Mundi, one of the world's leading independent classical music labels, has finally taken the downloading plunge. In an agreement with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), the world's largest distributor of digital music content, announced on January 24 at the annual music conference of the Marche International De l'Edition Musicale (MIDEM) in Cannes, Harmonia Mundi will make available its entire catalogue of early music and contemporary recordings to hundreds of digital music outlets around the world. IODA will also handle digital distribution of HM's catalogue within France, where Harmonia Mundi is headquartered. A separate agreement with Apple's iTunes makes all Harmonia Mundi titles available on that site as well. Also available are the classical, world, and jazz titles from the more than 30 independent labels that Harmonia Mundi distributes in many parts of the world.

Out of all the audiophile phrases, none stirs the hearts of music lovers like "true to the master tape"&mdash;not even "the absolute sound" of the original instruments, which even audio idealists realize is simply too much to demand. But true to the sound of the recorded master tape, now surely that's a goal within reach.

Okay, now things are getting confusing. Hot on the heels of his <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/010107hacked/">announcement</A&gt; that he had hacked HD DVD's Advanced Access Content System (AACS) digital rights management (DRM), muslix64 claimed to have done the same to Blu-Ray's implementation, with the help of anti-DRM crusader Janvitos. You can read the whole saga at the <A HREF="http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120869">Doom9 forum</A> but we'll just give you the juicy bits: "In less than 24 hours, without any Blu-ray equipment, but with the help of Janvitos, I managed to decrypt and play a Blu-ray media file using my known-plaintext attack."

"You are the greatest."