1. Siegfried Linkwitz, author of seminal papers on design and construction of active loudspeakers, has posted details on construction of a 3-way active dipole loudspeaker system, plus tutorials on speaker design, on his website linkwitzlab.com.

2. Audio magazine has closed its doors after 53 years of publication. Also, Mobile Fidelity has gone out of business.

3. Just picked up Leonard Maltin's 2000 Movie Guide. I can't help thinking that his discriminating against TV and straight-to video movies is playing a major role in keeping theaters open. It's now 1641 pages long, adding about 30 pages each year. Where will it end?

4. Recently I was in Boston and stopped at a supermarket newstand which was well stocked with a 20 foot wide display. I decided to survey magazines of interest to hobbyists. Number of audio mags--zero. Number of video mags--zero. Number of computer mags--zero. Number of computer game mags--22. We like to think that other hobbies have supplanted audio, but it seems that all do-it-yourself electronics hobbies have diminished. The availability of cheap and good-performing equipment gives no incentive to do it yourself. But the field of audio is more than just hardware and I believe people will want to communicate with others with the same interests. The BAS fulfills that need. We do cover some video, (where are the video societies?) but our core interest is audio.

5. A Site for Classic Vinyl Buffs: A Classical Record has over 150,000 LP titles in-stock of vinyl from the 1950’s to the 80’s. They specialise in Classical records (Violin, Piano, Chamber, Opera, Recitals, Early and Baroque); Audiophile (RCA Living Stereo, Mercury, DECCA and EMI); Jazz ( Progressive, Dixie, Vocalists, Gospel and Country); Broadway Shows and Soundtracks plus International, Folk, and Spoken Word. They also have their own line of Historical CDs including artists like Gioconda de Vito, Prihoda, Spalding, Charles Munch, Elly Ney and Landowska-Menuhin. Check out their web site at www.classicalrecords.com or write for a catalogue to: A Classical Record 547 West 27 St. Suite 680, New York, NY 10001.

6. DVD players have become the fastest-selling consumer- electronics product of all time: according to figures released by the Consumer Electronics Association in USA, sales since the DVD player’s initial introduction in 1997 have topped 3.1 million units. The CEA originally predicted purchases would reach the two-million mark in 1999, based on survey results published in late 1998. The extraordinary sales performance of the new medium has exceeded even their expectations, and has left previous best-sellers, such as CD players and home satellite systems, in the dust.