Premiere Design

Over a year ago, I profiled the amazing 101 X-treme speaker system from MBL. If you don't have a quarter-million dollars or a floor capable of supporting its 3600-pound bulk, consider the newly refined 101E Mk II.

With his magical hammer Mjöllnir, the Norse god Thor is said to have produced thunder. So there is no more appropriate name than Thor's Hammer for the ultimate subwoofer from Wilson Audio. In fact, this monster might have put Thor himself to shame, since it can reproduce frequencies even lower than natural thunder.

As I was looking for products to profile in this blog, I came across something astonishing - a tube-based monoblock power amp that costs $350,000/pair! Hand-built by Japanese boutique maker Wavac Audio Lab, the SH-833 isn't new - it was reviewed in Stereophile in 2004 - but when I saw that price tag, I knew I had to include it here.

Everyone knows that subwoofers are an essential part of just about any home theater in order to rattle your bones with explosions, rocket launches, and dinosaur roars. But they must also be capable of reproducing - and differentiating - the lowest musical notes in the movie's score. Among the most well-regarded practitioners of both tasks is JL Audio, especially its flagship Gotham g213.

Most consumers would probably apply the word "stereo" exclusively to 2-channel audio systems. So you might be surprised to learn that "stereo" has nothing to do with the number 2 per se—it derives from the Greek word for "solid." The word was applied to 2-channel sound systems when they first became available because those systems rendered a much more "solid" sonic image with more specific placement of individual elements (instruments, voices, etc.) than the monaural systems that had preceded them. Similarly, 5.1 surround systems are far more "stereo" than 2-channel systems.

As I've written many times, the Ultimate Gear blog is intended to cover A/V products that embody extreme performance, design, and/or price. The 2010 ES line of A/V receivers from Sony—which were unveiled last week at a press event in Beverly Hills, California—might not fit any of these criteria, but they include so many unique and highly useful features that I decided I could legitimately cover them here.

Omnidirectional speakers are nothing new, though there are many variations. For example, Italian maker Bolzano Villetri has taken an interesting approach with its Campanile series, which includes floorstanders, a center-channel speaker, and a subwoofer to outfit a complete home theater.