OTHER TECH

• Listen for a natural tonal balance. Acoustic instruments and vocals should sound realistic, without overemphasizing or underplaying any part of their range - especially the midrange and treble. (Most small speakers can't put out much bass, and that's why we use subwoofers.) An instrument with a wide frequency range, like a piano, shouldn't change character between its low, middle, and high registers. If a violin sounds like chalk on a blackboard or a singer sounds like he's blaring at you through a bullhorn or from the end of a tunnel, you'll be reaching for the aspirin rather than the remote.

• Listen to the quality of the bass. It should be tight and detailed, not boomy with a vague "one-note" quality - unless, of course, you're listening to "One-Note Samba."

• Listen to a variety of music. You'll want to check out loud and soft passages, passages dense with detail, and the very beginnings of musical notes. A good speaker system will have a wide dynamic range, will let you distinguish "inner voices" in orchestral music and overlapping sound effects in movies, and will let the initial pluck of a guitar string or crack of a snare drum come through with realistic presence.

• Listen to how the satellite speakers and subwoofer blend with each other. The individual speakers shouldn't draw attention to themselves but instead produce a spacious, seamless, coherent three-dimensional sound field over a wide listening area. In particular, the subwoofer's top range should dovetail neatly with the bottom end of the satellites. If there's a gap between where the satellites leave off and the subwoofer kicks in, music will tend to sound thin.

• Listen for the qualities of imaging and space. An instrument or vocalist should come from a precise location in the sound field created by the speakers, not be as hard to locate as an altruistic contestant on Survivor. (You'll need some discs you know have good imaging to check this.) And a movie soundtrack should convincingly envelop you, while music played with surround processing should sound like you're in a real performing space.

• Listen to movie dialogue and TV news. Since most speaking voices will be placed in the center channel, pay attention to the sound from the center speaker. Do the voices sound clear and natural?