Mark Fleischmann

The French senate and national assembly have voted to approve a copyright law revision that ostensibly requires music players and downloads to be interoperable across all platforms. At least, that is the way mainstream media are reporting the story. Inexplicably described as a defeat for Apple—which is grimly determined to keep iTunes purchases playable only on the iPod—the compromise nonetheless contains enough wiggle room to undermine its main premise: (1) If record companies agree that iTunes downloads must not play on other devices, Apple's Fairplay DRM will stand as is. (2) Rivals seeking to make iTunes downloads playable on their own hardware must first prove to a French regulatory agency that there will be no conflict with Apple patents or other rights. These two loopholes will ensure that iTunes downloads and iPods will remain joined at the hip. Of course the law isn't specifically about Apple. The same loopholes apply to any would-be monopolist seeking to bind hardware and software together. Apple just happens to be the most successful one. However, Jobs will have to keep looking over his shoulder. The interoperability movement is also rising in Scandinavia, Britain, and Poland.

PRICE $1,614

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Highly compact steel sphere enclosures
Transparent sound quality
Big soundstage with no restrictive sweet spot
Minus
On-wall or near-wall placement well advised
Tricky subwoofer mating
Likes a lot of power

THE VERDICT
A sub/sat system whose great strengths are its midrange clarity, wide dispersion, and décor-friendly form factor.

The interaction between speaker manufacturers and the public they serve has changed markedly since the days when I was a longhaired college kid buying my first speakers. Back then, design ideas flowed in one direction, from the top down, from the drawing board to the sales floor—and if you bought a speaker, you nearly always bought a box speaker. Now speaker-design imperatives flow in both directions. With a greater variety of beckoning form factors, speaker buyers influence the design process simply by choosing the products that fit into our lives.

Price: $2,888 At A Glance: 180-degree cylindrical tweeter • Stable, wide-open sound • Tilted sub driver

Shape is destiny for Anthony Gallo Acoustics. The company is best known for its spherical and cylindrical speaker enclosures, made of metal and tough as tanks. But the Classico Series is the first Gallo product to use a plain rectan-gular box—for consumers, the company says, who prefer a more traditional look. Though not as curvaceous as other Gallo lines, the Classico is still available in a beautiful Cherry veneer finish, along with the more staid Black Ash veneer of our review samples. Note that the speakers are sold only through the Gallo Website: roundsound.com. The more conventional construction and factory-direct approach make the Classico models among the most affordable Gallo speakers ever.

Gallo is overhauling its acclaimed lines of orb-shaped metal-clad satellite speakers with the new A'Diva and Micro lines, which are five and four inches in diameter, and sell for $329 and $239 each. Both use a new full-range driver that is said to offer wider dispersion, though at the cost of a slight reduction in efficiency. Don't worry, an average receiver should be able to run them fine.