LATEST ADDITIONS

Can't we all just get along? If you live in one of the 20 million U.S. households that own two or more iPods (a JVC stat), there will inevitably be battles over whose player belongs in the tabletop music system. Surely my Ben Harper trumps your OK Go. JVC makes it easier for your iPods to cohabitate with the new dual-dock NX-PN7 tabletop audio system. The NX-PN7 will charge both iPods when docked, it sports a video output and an analog audio input, and it throws in an AM/FM tuner, clock, and timer for good measure. It will be available in April for $149.95.

The No. 502 is Mark Levinson's latest surround preamp-processor. The single-chassis design replaces the dual-chassis No. 40. It's HDMI 1.1 compliant, and doesn't handle the new lossless codecs (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio), but that may not be a concern if your BD or HD DVD player passes a high-bit PCM signal. Pointed questions about the upgrade path went unanswered. The bleeding-edge Gennum 9351 video processors mustered a squeaky clean picture, with proprietary deinterlacing and edge correction and 1.6 gigaflops of processing power. Yes, 1080p and 24p are provided for. Along for the demo ride were the No. 433 three-channel amp, the No. 432 two-channel amp, and fabulous Revel Ultima2 speakers. Two years in development, the 502 will ship in the second quarter. Price: a mere 30 grand.

Every year I step across the threshold of North Hall, paradise for car-audio fanatics, to be greeted by the impressive roar of dozens (seemingly hundreds) of car subwoofers. This year I wasn't able to bring myself to walk through the hall. I'm just not tough enough anymore!

At the Dolby booth, this prototype of the first-ever audio/video receiver with the new Dolby Volume technology was on display outside their mini-theater. Onkyo, with a tradition of early integration of new audio technologies, won the honor of debuting the new process which organically rejiggers the loud and quiet parts of a soundtrack within a scene, such as hard-to-hear dialogue amid background sound effects, as well as equalizing the levels between two different programs when we change channels or go to commercial, with very enjoyable results in all of the demo I've heard in the past year. Clearly this is something that consumers have been demanding, one of those seemingly simple problems that's a bear to solve (otherwise everyone would do it!)