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As Larry Greenhill reports in his review of the Sony">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/469/">Sony SCD-C555ES SACD changer, "I didn't know what to expect from multichannel SACD. Would a multichannel music-only disc give me high-energy dramatics? Would there be any room for meditative, closed-eyed, total progressive muscular relaxation?" As Greenhill says, "The best was yet to come."

It seems that all of the forces in the music industry have lately been conspiring against the music lover and audiophile. The record labels and their hired gun, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), have so far blocked digital outputs on high-resolution audio players, insisted that watermarks be inserted into both high- and low-resolution audio data, and have even started to restricthttp://www.stereophile.com/news/11178/">restrict; consumer's fair use of compact discs and digital downloads.

Over-the-air classical music broadcasting is becoming increasingly rare, but classical has got a huge listenership on the Internet, according to a survey by rating service Arbitron">http://www.arbitron.com">Arbitron, Inc., which early this month announced that three classical music stations were among the five most listened to on the Internet.

Audiophiles tend to be a fussy lot. But there are always a few sure-fire items that will put a smile on their faces without breaking the bank. We've got dozens of great ideas, guaranteed to suit every taste, available online (links are below) from our secure Web pages.

Every Consumer">http://www.cesweb.org">Consumer Electronics Show features unusual prototypes from engineers throughout the world. Some are laboratory curiosities that never develop into viable products, but others have great potential.

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.