LATEST ADDITIONS

Widely assumed to be at death's door, streaming-audio site <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/">MP3.com</A&gt; may be on the rebound after reaching a preliminary agreement October 19 to license more than one million songs from the <A HREF="http://www.nmpa.org/">National Music Publishers' Association, Inc.</A> (NMPA) and the organization's primary subsidiary, the Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA). Individual music publishers represented by the Fox Agency must approve the agreement before it can take effect.

John Atkinson shuffles his feet a little and finally mutters, " . . . Convergence." He laments, "I swore I wasn't going to use the 'C' word, but when you're faced with writing about a product that smashes the boundaries between component categories as completely as the CardDeluxe does, you have little choice." JA reviews the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/280/">Digital Audio Labs CardDeluxe PC soundcard</A> and answers the pointed question: "But it's only a PC soundcard. What's the big deal?"

With $60,000 in award money as incentive, the hacker community is helping the <A HREF="http://www.sdmi.org/">Secure Digital Music Initiative</A> find out just how secure six proposed watermarking technologies really are. On October 12, as SDMI representatives were <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10870/">testing</A&gt; the audibility of three of the watermarks, the organization announced the closure of a month-long challenge it had offered hackers: break the code. According to the terms of the challenge, each defeated technology will mean $10,000 to a successful hacker.

It's a reviewer's privilege to be able to switch back and forth between tube and solid-state gear (or combinations thereof) as the mood or the assignment moves him. Still, I find I'm inevitably drawn back to the Epicurean delights of triode tube gear. When done right, there's an alluring musicality to it, like the breath of life. However, in any tube <I>vs</I> solid-state contest, the relative tradeoffs between tone and resolution&mdash;sweetness and articulation, euphony and frequency extension&mdash;must be taken into consideration.

The results from last week's Vote! indicate a clear distaste for watermarking as a means of preventing the pirating of recordings. But what do you suggest be done in its place?

L<I>ast night I saw him on the stair&mdash;<BR>the little man who wasn't there.<BR>I saw him there again today;<BR>oh, how I wish he'd go away.</I>

The most common complaint about record companies: CD prices are too high. In fact, many blame Napster's runaway success on the insistence of "greedy labels" on pricing discs at $15 or higher. Apparently BMG Direct, a division of <A HREF="http://www.bmg.com/">BMG Entertainment</A>, has put two and two together and found it equals $9.99.