Also in the Belkin room, I had the pleasure of chatting with Dr. Bruce Edgar who had furnished the room with his Edgarhorn Titan II loudspeakers ($16,000). Dr. Edgar is an experimental physicist. And also a mind reader. I sat beside him, facing the system with its outrageous array of silvery PureAV interconnects and speaker cables jutting out like all sorts of tentacles and arms and legs, thinking: "Any other cables would make this system look ugly," when Dr. Edgar said to me: "Any other cables would make this system look ugly, don't you think?"

"Yes, that's what I was just thinking."

And, when, after a bit of sitting and enjoying the music, I thought to myself: "This music sounds so real," Dr. Edgar commented: "This is as close as you'll get to live sound."

"That's what I was just thinking!" I told him.

Along with the really lovely PureAV Mercury Series interconnects (prices range from $500 to $7000), the Titan IIs were being driven by Cyrus Brenneman's 15Wpc Cavalier Plus amp ($3500).

The Belkin room, by the way, was hopping. It wasn't the music that initially drew me in — it was the bar (Lucas makes a fine martini), but it was the sound that kept me there. Despite all the background noise, the system sounded wonderfully musical.

I asked Dr. Edgar to stand next to his Titans and their very large subwoofers. He smiled happily, telling me, "People who really like horns are going to put up with anything to get better sound."

That's just what I was thinking.