LATEST ADDITIONS

The genesis of this project goes back nearly 17 years, when my wife, Joan, and I moved into a brownstone floorthrough in Brooklyn. As we were about to sign the lease, our soon-to-be landlord said, "Oh, one more thing: your upstairs neighbor is a musician." This did not exactly discourage us from signing the lease, however, and soon I began to see a steady stream of musicians trudging up the stairs outside our apartment: Oliver Lake, Sonny Rollins, Pheeroan akLaff, Bob Moses, Marty Ehrlich, and a whole bunch of other people I was reading about in the jazz press. Just who was this guy?

All right, 'fess up. Have you ever bought pirated music? Sometimes it's the only way to get what you want.

Last week, <A HREF="http://www.philips.com">Philips Electronics</A> and <A HREF="http://www.sony.com">Sony Corporation</A> announced the completion of Version 1.0 of the Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) format specification. According to a statement, the format specification will be released to licensees early this month to allow hardware manufacturers and software providers to begin preparing products for launch in the coming months.

Singer Dusty Springfield died at her home near Oxford, England last Tuesday, March 2, a few weeks before what would have been her 60th birthday and only one day before she was to have appeared at Buckingham Palace to be honored by Queen Elizabeth. The cause was breast cancer.

The English flat-panel speaker company <A HREF="http://www.nxt.co.uk/">New Transducers Ltd.</A>, also known as NXT, recently announced a new transparent loudspeaker technology called SoundVu that the company says will enable television and computer screens to function simultaneously as loudspeakers.

I first saw and heard SimAudio's Moon amp and preamp at WCES two years back, and something about their aesthetics appealed to me: Canadian ruggedness coupled with a decidedly French panache. I remember that those attributes also characterized the demo's sound, although I can't recall the speakers or the sources involved. At succeeding shows, it gradually dawned on me that the Moon components were the fixed elements in a succession of impressive demos.

Audio magazine has appeared to have been in difficulties of late, with falling circulation, advertising revenues, and issue size. The current editor-in-chief, Michael Riggs, has worked hard in the past few years to create a more appealing editorial product, since he replaced long-term editor Gene Pitts. However, an even bigger change is now taking place.