Mark Fleischmann

In other Dolby news, Dolby Volume, tamer of blaring ads and dodgy surround levels, is coming to Toshiba Regza TVs in both the U.S. and Europe, as well as in a Harman Kardon receiver. It's also built into the cool Airfonix transmitter/receiver device pictured above, which accepts two-channel sources both RCA and XLR. Dolby's mobile strategy is (of course) Dolby Mobile, which manipulates the soundstage in cells and other portable devices. Dolby Axon provides surround-like effects in online voice gaming applications. And Dolby Digital Plus is now being used in Italian as well as French television broadcasts.

This is the second installment of In Progress, an occasional series on noteworthy things about products under review.

Are you plagued by doubts about the iThing compatibility of a prospective surround receiver purchase? If you're actually inspecting a carton in one of those old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores, Sony has the solution. Its STR-DN1020 ($500) lists every iDevice with which it's compatible right on the top of the carton! Complete with little graphic representations, no less. Since our 600-pixels-wide image may not be entirely legible, we'll list them below.

I've already described a Totem product as best sound of the show, and I haven't changed my mind, but the Induction Dynamics room was just as good. So it's a tie. Big, smooth, transparent, addicting. The big fella is the ID1.18 and the center is the C1.8. Other models, including in- and on-walls, complement the ones we heard. There's no digital room correction built in--the sound is just plain old great engineering with patented crossover, timbre-matched drivers, external sub amp, etc. You get the best qualities of a big speaker (massive soundstage, top-to-bottom accuracy, meaty bass) with the best qualities of a small speaker (timbral fidelity, phase coherence, subtlety, comfort)--in a, well, pretty huge package. But it sounded stupendous. A 5.1-channel system would be roughly 20 grand and the ID folks will match your existing speaker finish or create whatever you desire on a custom basis. Wow, wow, and wow. Also, wow.

Infinity's CAI: constant acoustic improvements.