Mark Fleischmann

This is the disc drive of Denon's universal player. It is entirely a Denon creation, not sourced from another company. So now you get more of an idea of what your $3800 pays for. But wait, there's still more.

By the way, iThing is my lonely protest against having to type both iPod and iPhone in blog after blog. The Marantz IS301 is a wireless Bluetooth dock package consisting of four pieces: dock, cradle, receiving station, and card remote. You can detach the wireless dock from the cradle, with your iThing in it, and wield them as though they were a remote control. The cradle is hardwired via dual CAT5 (one for audio, one for video) to the receiving station which has the usual jacks to connect to a receiver.

The Mordaunt-Short Mezzo line already included a tower, and the Mezzo 6 continues in the line, but now it has a big brother in the form of the Mezzo 8 ($2495/pair). The latter's a three-way with two 6.25-inch woofers, 5.25-inch mid, and one-inch aluminum tweeter mounted at the top of the enclosure. The excellent Alumni sat/sub line has another upsized model, shown -- the Alumni 8 ($1095/pair), a tall, slender speaker with four passive woofers, two active ones, and a tweeter. It complements the similar though not identical Alumni 3 center. Stand or wall mount, high gloss black or white with black grilles.

We thought the tiny sat CDT showed at last year's CES sounded great, and after a year of further tweaking, it's shipping as the Sonapod. In a 5.1 set with any of various subwoofers, it might sell for anywhere from $900-2000. CDT also showed a small triangular sat that was like nothing else we've ever seen. Possible review material.