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Jonathan Scull gets intimate with the HeadRoom">http://www.stereophile.com//amplificationreviews/614/">HeadRoom BlockHead headphone amplifier stating, "I listen to headphones for hours at a stretch while writing my reviews. The equipment I listen to spoils me to death, and I need a headphone rig to match." Has J-10 found the ultimate headphone amp? We'll see.

We've learned to pretty much ignore consumer electronics company announcements for their latest CD and DVD players/burners. The usual "breakthrough" turns out to be yet another faster record/playback speed bump, or a longer list of compatible formats (Panasonic's latest recorder, announced last week, can handle—take a deep breath—DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, and CD-ROM discs).

The copy cat will soon be out of the bag down under. Australia's musical copyright society has reluctantly agreed to the deployment of CD-copying kiosks throughout the nation in exchange for what an Australian news site calls "a modest royalty payment" of about 6% of the $5AUS copying fee—or 30¢ per disc.

Lars is dead.

They have become the companies music fans around the world love to hate. But to their stockholders, the businesses developing CD-restriction technologies are a promising new technology niche for investing. SunnCommhttp://www.sunncomm.com">SunnComm; is one of these new companies dedicated to finding means to restrict the ways consumers can use compact discs, and last week they used their annual stockholder meeting as an opportunity to announce their latest copy-protection product.

Things are looking up for high-resolution audio, with price drops for DVD-Audio discs announced by one major record label in a move to attract a larger audience.

Michael Fremer heard that the Alesis">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/605/">Alesis MasterLink ML-9600 Hard Disk/CD-R Recorder "can sound better than all but the absolute top-drawer analog," and, of course, had to investigate. Mikey 'splains why audiophiles should take note of a machine generally used as a mastering tool by the recording industry.