LATEST ADDITIONS

Somehow I don't think we're going to be seeing this one in <I>The New Yorker</I>.

<I>aka</I> the Large Hadron Collider at Cern.

Many audiophiles find that it takes months, if not years, to develop excellent listening skills. How good are your listening skills?

Tweeter Home Entertainment Group, Inc., the national electronics retail chain, has teamed with Sonos, Inc., developer of wireless multiroom music systems for the digital home, to bring "the digital home experience directly to the retail floor." The retailer will run broadband Internet connections to Sonos Digital Music System point-of-sale displays at over 150 Tweeter locations, to give music lovers live demonstrations of music server systems.

What, exactly, is one to make of a speaker named "Reference"? An easy answer might be that it will be expensive. Another easy answer is that someone might be being overly optimistic or downright deceitful. Ambitious? Certainly.

When reviewing affordable speakers, it's critical to have benchmarks and comparisons for various price points. Inexpensive speaker designs are exercises in tradeoffs and compromises, especially for the least costly products. In all of my reviews, I try to compare the speaker in question with other designs close to the review sample's price, chosen from my list of previously reviewed speakers. From time to time, if a speaker particularly impresses me, I ask the manufacturer if I can keep the speakers around a while longer, so that it can serve as a comparison reference for a certain price point. That's not to say that any speaker I <I>don't</I> keep around is less desirable&mdash;there's just not enough room in my house to keep a sample of every speaker I like. An audio reviewer's wife puts up with enough as it is.