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If Lydstrom">http://lydstrom.com/">Lydstrom, Inc. has anything to do with it, the next hot ticket in home audio won't be just another CD player, but a musical database manager capable of organizing and playing as many as 5000 songs, from CDs or from Internet downloads. The Boston, Massachusetts-based company announced June 30 that it has licensed Lucent">http://www.lucent.com/">Lucent Technologies' Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (ePAC) for inclusion in a product as yet unnamed but projected to be available by Christmas 1999.

Last week, Texas">http://www.ti.com">Texas Instruments, Liquid">http://www.liquidaudio.com">Liquid Audio, Fraunhofer, and SanDiskhttp://www.sandisk.com">SanDisk; announced that they've teamed to offer what they describe as "the first complete solution" for the secure downloading of music off the Internet onto portable audio players. The companies say that their programmable DSP-based technology is the first to meet the newly released Secure">www.sdmi.org">Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) guidelines for digital music portable devices, and is now available for manufacturers who want to develop secure players in time for Christmas 1999.

Loudspeaker designer Bill Eggleston has joined Cello">http://www.Cello-US.com/">Cello Technologies Corporation. He will oversee the development of a new line of no-compromise loudspeakers, according to a company press release dated July 1. Eggleston designed the Andra loudspeaker, which was designated Stereophile's "Product of the Year" for 1997.

Folk wisdom has it that it's wiser not to lock the gate after the horses have escaped. The Secure">http://www.sdmi.org/">Secure Digital Music Initiative, a consortium of 140 music, software, and hardware companies, has taken that adage to heart. In a significant departure from its original intent to block the distribution of free music on the Internet, the Secure Digital Music Initiative announced in the last week of June that its forthcoming specification for music software and hardware will accommodate the "legacy content" already in existence. There are reportedly as many as 500,000 songs available in the MP3 format, and they will continue to be available even as new, robustly encrypted music comes onto the market.

It's been 30 years since hordes of wild-eyed music lovers converged on White Lake, a small town just north of New York City, for an event that would soon become an icon for a generation. Could anyone back then have imagined that, three decades later, Woodstock would cost $150/ticket and evolve into a marketing opportunity and website?

Wednesday, June 23, was an auspicious day for Musicland">http://www.musicland.com/">Musicland Stores Corporation. That day the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based music and video retailer took its sales online. Four websites, each mirroring one of Musicland's four divisions, went live simultaneously with a promotional contest offering customers the chance to win daily and weekly prizes and a $10,000 grand prize---including a Sony home entertainment system. Participants can also win a trip for two to the World">http://www.wwf.com/">World Wrestling Federation Summer Slam in Minneapolis on August 22.

Are audiophiles and recording engineers natural adversaries? From the many slings and arrows hurled back and forth between the camps, it would certainly seem so. Robert Harley asks, "But are recording engineers less concerned about sound quality than are audiophiles? If so, why? Isn't someone who has devoted his life to recording music more caring than the hobbyist audiophile? If not, why not?" Read his analysis of the issues in "A">http://www.stereophile.com//asweseeit/119/">A Clash of Values?" Also included is a lively volley of readers' letters.