Darryl Wilkinson

Affordable bass-in quantity with quality.

For many years, European speakers-especially bookshelf models-have had the reputation for their inability to produce the quantity of bass that the majority of ears on this continent like to hear. Canton's AS subwoofer line-a range of powered subs aimed at providing affordable, yet substantial bass response to the sector of masses seeking better-than-average performance-ought to help lay that old notion to rest for good.

Perhaps you're thinking, "Hey, that new Xbox 360 looks pretty hot," along with the thought, "Man, how many remote controls do I need to figure out in order to use my home entertainment system?" It might just be, then, that the idea of adding a remote control for the Xbox 360 into your living room will be too much for your precarious state of mind.

Pity those poor manufacturers of portable audio and video devices whose names don't begin with an "A" and who don't make gadgets with a model numbers starting with a lower-case "i". HandHeld Entertainment, makers of one of those "not an iPod audio/video" portables, sees an avenue to fame and success in offering a handheld portable player that costs significantly less than an iPod from Apple. Prior to Apple's much ballyhooed introduction earlier this month, HandHeld Entertainment announced plans for the next generation of their digital video/audio/photo media players.

Feed your hungry eyes and ears on an attractively entertaining meal of lean on-wall speakers and tender, choice electronics.

Whether by nature or nurture, I'm a speaker guy. I'm more captivated by speakers than any of the associated electronics in a home theater system. As a result of this singular infatuation, I've always believed, as a general rule of thumb, that you should allocate at least half of the total cost of the audio portion of your system to the speakers. I don't know why the math seems to work out that way, but, in my mind, it just does. So what am I to make of a system in which the Primare electronics cost twice as much as the Sequence/REL speaker package?