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Running audio signals around a home's AC power wiring has been a Integrated consumer">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10754/index.html">consumer electronics goal for several years. The reasoning goes that most folks live in homes that cannot be easily rewired for multiroom audio or multichannel surround, so why not use the AC wires that are already in the walls? Think of it as the ultimate solid-core interconnect.

Nowhere is the inflationary cycle spinning faster than in concert ticket prices. The best tickets for performances by major pop and rock stars this summer will be priced in the low-to-mid hundreds. No, that's not a misprint, and it doesn't include "service charges" and other bogus fees tacked on by ticket agencies. Good seats for Eric Clapton's summer tour will be more than $250 each; similar seating at Simon and Garfunkel's "Old Friends" show at the Hollywood Bowl will go for $700, according to "Parsley, Sage and $350 Seats," a revealing look at skyrocketing ticket prices by Ethan Smith in the May 7 issue of The Wall Street Journal.

From the April 2004 issue, a must-read for all audiophiles: Keith Howard does the SACD and DVD-Audio math for "New">http://www.stereophile.com/features/404metrics">New Media Metrics." Using a vast collection of informative graphs, KH explores hi-rez attributes and puzzlers. "In the case of SACD, why provide a potential bandwidth in excess of 1.4MHz, only to fill more than 95% of it with quantization noise?"

Have you ever been to a rock concert and come away mumbling, "Those engineers must be deaf"? After enduring three hours of an all-out sonic assault, you were probably just a tad cranky, but the facts are that those engineers probably were deaf, or well on their way.

It's safe to say that few audio engineers are more famous than Ray Dolby. On May 1, the founder and chairman of Dolby">www.dolby.com">Dolby Laboratories was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, joining such luminaries as Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, and Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb and the phonograph.

We were startled to receive an email announcement recently informing us that Scot Markwell, long-time set-up and equipment maven for The Abso!ute Sound's erstwhile editor Harry Pearson, had joined the staff at www.themusic.comhttp://www.themusic.com">www.themusic.com; to manage its Gear Shop division.

The Home Entertainment 2004 Show (HE2004) is coming to NYC May 20–23, 2004 at the Hilton New York Hotel & Towers. HE2004 is open to the public—consumers will not only have the opportunity to see, hear, and demo the finest high-performance products consumer electronics has to offer, they can also attend a dozen free educational seminars on a variety of topics and enjoy live music daily from jazz and blues artists during relaxing breaks for lunch. The educational seminars and music luncheons will be offered all three days of the Show. Seminars will be moderated by some of the consumer electronics industry's most respected editors, manufacturers, and custom-installation professionals.