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Audiophiles have been hit hard lately, as DVD-Audio's release schedule has succumbed to piracy concerns and Sony has so far refused to allow digital outputs on SACD decks. (Only digital outs for CD playback are allowed.) You can listen, but don't touch. But at least there are still no such restrictions on CD players that would inhibit the use of their digital datastreams . . . for now.

There's nothing like a new high-resolution format to get an audiophile's interest, and this year saw two major announcements. But with DVD-Audio stalling, attention is sure to focus on Sony and Philips' new SACD format. Jonathan Scull jumps right in with his review of the Sony">http://www.stereophile.com//digitalsourcereviews/180/">Sony SCD-1 Super Audio CD/CD player. As J-10 notes: "Rarely have I anticipated the arrival of a review component as I did the Sony SCD-1 Super Audio CD player." But does it live up to the hype?

The band that built a cult following on good vibes is feeling a trifle dysfunctional of late. Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh is at odds with fellow bandmembers over how best to put the group’s 35-year musical archive on the Internet. Grateful">http://www.dead.net/">Grateful Dead Productions has been consulting about the prospect of making their vault available for computer download with several Silicon Valley companies, many of whose executives are Deadheads eager to affiliate themselves with the legendary rockers by sponsoring the venture.

Audiophiles eager to try DVD-Audio will have to wait just a bit longer. Matsushita Industrial Electric Co. and Japan Victor Company have decided to hold back their new DVD-A players, in the wake of the widely publicized decryption of the format's copy-protection scheme by a Norwegian computer hacker. The hacker published his workaround of the encryption on the Internet late in November.

As reported last March, loudspeaker manufacturer Von Schweikert Research closed its doors after a disastrous flood hit the factory (see previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10413/">previous report). Many thought this was the end of the story, but last week, Dr. Edward Gonzaga, of the Gonzaga Investment Group, announced the formation of a new version of the company, to be named Von">mailto:albertvonn@aol.com">Von Schweikert Audio.

The quest for new speaker technologies has resulted in some novel approaches to the reproduction of sound, as witnessed by products announced in the last few years by NXThttp://www.nxt.co.uk/">NXT; and 1 . . . Ltd. (See previous">http://www.stereophile.com/news/10234/">previous story.) Some of Stereophile's readers may also recall that, back in May 1996, American">http://www.atcsd.com">American Technology Corp. shook things up in the audio world by announcing what the company described as its "breakthough" new technology, the much-debated HyperSonic Sound (HSS). This was followed up in February 1997, when ATC announced the introduction of its Stratified Field Technology SFT, which company literature touted as "a significant improvement over conventional loudspeakers."

One of the challenging attributes of the new DVD-Audio format is the ability to release music in high-resolution multichannel (four or more) sound. For some this will be a thorny issue: Can previously released recordings be remixed to take advantage of the extra channels without sounding gimmicky? Should classical and/or live recordings use the surround channels for concert-hall ambience? How long will it be until consumers even care about setting up their systems to take advantage of more than two full-bandwidth channels?