Mark Fleischmann

Among the new stuff from Onix, a champion of the budget speaker genre, is the step-up Concerto. Eight hundred a pair will buy you a dual-drive woofer with magnets in front and back. We're betting that when we get to try it, that's going to be some pretty disciplined bass, with the driver starting and stopping on a dime, though of course, that's just speculation at this point. Also new is the X-Statik which puts the tweeter and midrange in an open baffle above the conventionally enclosed woofer. It'll be $699/pair.

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.

The LVCC brain trust offers a new innovation in pedestrian traffic management--the double yellow line. Presumably that means stay to the right (though that didn't stop some of these guys) and don't try passing anyone (though that didn't stop me).

And it's "crank me up, baby." Yup, these radios operate with cranks, old-fashioned wrist power, as opposed to batteries.