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On May 26, http://www.N2K.com"> N2K's http://www.JazzCentralStation.com"> JazzCentralStation launched the first officially sanctioned Miles Davis StarSite, http://www.MilesDavis.com"> MilesDavis.com. An all-star musical and multimedia tribute was held that evening at New York City's Birdland, hosted by Dr. Billy Taylor and recorded by Phil Ramone and Michael Cuscuna for a September release on N2K Encoded Music. May 26 would have been Davis' 72nd birthday.

A single standard for terrestrial digital radio is still somewhere over the rainbow. Despite pressure from broadcasters to form an industry alliance, leading developers of the new technology are intent on pursuing their own courses, attendees learned at the 2000 National">http://www.nab.org/">National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas in mid-April. Executives from USA">http://www.usadr.com/">USA Digital Radio and Lucent">http://www.lucentdigitalradio.com/">Lucent Digital Radio, the two biggest players in the sector, told NAB members that their design and testing programs are still in early stages of development, too soon for accord.

The National">http://www.nab.org">National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has initiated its planned appeal of a ruling by the Librarian of Congress that establishes a royalty rate for all Webcasters, including traditional radio stations that stream their programming on the Internet.

For the second consecutive year, a film using the Nagra Digital Recorder (Nagra-D) as the location sound device has been nominated for an Oscar Award for Best Sound. The film this year is L.A. Confidential, which has received a total of 9 Oscar nominations. The winners will be named at the 70th Annual Academy Awards on March 23, 1998. Last year, The English Patient, which also used the Nagra-D, won the award for Best Sound

There was buzz about many rooms at the High End Munich show but perhaps few were as talked about as the Nagra/Wilson Audio Specialties setup in Atrium 4.1 F130. It seemed to be among the more packed ones, a tough room to get into. I passed by twice before I was able to poke my head in, then was only able to return briefly near the end of the show.

Naim Audio's Naim Classics label has begun releasing recordings in Dual Pack format that contains both a Red-Book CD and 24-bit/88.2kHz audio DVD for $24.95. The exclusive US distributor of Naim's high resolution titles will be www.premieremusic.nethttp://www.premieremusic.net">www.premieremusic.net;.

On January 14, anyone calling Naim Audio heard an Elgar recording, and visitors to the Naim">http://www.naim-audio.com">Naim website forum learned the sad news that founder and managing director Julian Vereker had died. The company—indeed, British hi-fi as a whole—is mourning the loss of one of its brightest and strongest personalities.