1.  Volumes 1-10 of the BAS Speaker are now available as pdf files on CD. They comprise about 2500 pages of text from 1973 to 1982. The price is $40 for non-members, $30 for members and $20 as part of a membership renewal. Those who have helped out in the scanning will receive a free copy.

2.  The Heath Company's Electronic learning labs offered a way of learning the basics. Now Agilent Technologies has introduced a product to learn modern instruments and measurements. The Agilent U3000A Electronic Instrumentation Training Kit was designed specifically to assist in learning instrument operation and measurement techniques. It works with the four most comon pieces of test equipment that every engineer uses: the digital multimeter, a power supply, an oscilloscope, and a function generator. The kit is made up of a PIC microcontroller and a variety of peripherals, such as an analog-to-digital converter, power sources, temperature sensor, 8-bit LED display, buzzer and relay. An introduction to digital sampling scopes is provided along with measurement techniques. Users can even demo signal displays in the frequency domain using a scope's fast Fourier transform. The secret to making this kit successful is the complete documentation supplied and the ready-to-run lab experiments. The experiments are designed around Agilent instruments, but other equipments probably could be used. $199. Root URL: www.agilent.com  Direct reference section: HERE

3.  Man retires on "record sale" A man says he can now retire because someone bought his massive record collection on eBay for the asking price —- $3 million. The price tag is one of the highest recorded by eBay. A buyer from Ireland agreed to shell out $3,002,150 for the collection of nearly 3 million vinyl albums, singles and CDs, owner Paul Mawhinney said. On Thursday, the 68-year-old Mawhinney closed Record Rama that had opened in Ross Township (OH) in 1968. "I am legally blind. I had a couple of strokes a few years ago...and it's time at my age to think about doing something else with my life," he said

4.  In "The Emperor's New Sampling Rate —- Are CDs Actually Good Enough?" Paul Lehrman writes in the April 2008 Mix about David Moran and Brad Meyer's ABX tests of HiRez versus CD quality.

5.  For BAS members out of town we have a special offer for Jazz lovers. A package of 30 Jazz CDs, randomly picked from Ira Leonard's collection, for $22 including shipping in the USA. To order, send a check, made out to "Boston Audio Society", to David Hadaway, POB 460, Rindge NH 03461. These were donated to the Society by Ira's brother, Joe Leonard.