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Retail may be bouncing back. Best Buy, North America's number one electronics chain, reported an 18% gain in total sales for its third quarter ended November 29. The Richfield, MN–based operation posted $6.03 billion in total sales, with same-store sales up 8.6%.

Julian Hirsch, the man who personified the state of audio criticism for nearly half a century, died on November 24 after a long illness.

Is bigger better? Michael Fremer sets out to determine just that as he reviews the Pass">http://www.stereophile.com/amplificationreviews/1103pass">Pass Labs XA160 monoblock power amplifier. As Fremer explains, "While the industry-feminizing tiny triode set has made a great deal of noise in the past few years (I can hear them hissing now), soft-walking, big-stick-carrying, mega-power amplifiers still circle the globe."

With few exceptions, 2003 has been a slow year for specialty A/V retailers. In late November, both Ultimate Electronics and Tweeter Group reported disappointing figures for their third and fourth fiscal quarters, respectively. New York's Harvey Electronics, however, posted respectable gains given the stagnant economy.

The music goes round and round: An investment group led by former Universal Music chief Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is in the lead to acquire Warner Music Group (WMG) and Warner/Chappell Music Publishing from corporate parent Time Warner, according to reports issued the third week of November. Bronfman's group—a consortium of banks and venture capital firms—has offered $2.8 billion for Time Warner's musical properties, possibly forcing prior suitor EMI Group PLC to drop out of the bidding. On Thursday, November 20, EMI chairman Eric Nicoll told reporters that Time Warner had informed his company of "a possible proposal from another party as an alternative to our own firm offer."

One of the keys to SACD's potential acceptance within the mass market is the hybrid disc format, ensuring that all of those Stones, Dylan, or Pink Floyd discs can be purchased by consumers with regular CD players. Although the DVD-Audio camp has played">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11515/index.html">played with the idea of hybrid discs for its format, nothing has made it past the testing stages yet.

Grabbing a few big gulps can sometimes fill you up quickly, but it can also lead to a little indigestion. This proved to be the case for D&M">http://www.dm-holdings.com">D&M Holdings, which filed results for the first half of its fiscal year, ending September 30, 2003, and its financial forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2004 with the Tokyo Stock Exchange.