Mark Fleischmann

In fact, these glass-enclosed speakers work amazingly well. The advantages of glass are high density, rigidity, and (with the aid of a damping chamber behind the drivers) "no vibrations," presumably meaning none of the bad kind. Warmth, depth, and solid controlled bass were what I heard and quite liked. Waterfall will also offer on-walls when the French manufacturer gets its U.S. distribution nailed down, which should happen any minute now.

The best truly tiny satellite we've ever heard is the One|Sound Model 2.2 from CDT Audio. Mounted to the wall, the two-inch mid-tweeter handled everything above 200Hz with confidence and ease--we actually thought, at first, that the surprisingly coherent sound came from larger models sitting below. To really show how small these things are, we started pulling stuff out of our pockets to indicate scale. We're guessing CDT will do well by appealing to the existing audience for the almost equally small Bose Jewel Cubes--which are sold only as part of an integrated system and thus operate at a competitive disadvantage.

Do we detect an extra spring in Thiel's step? The revered but staid speaker maker suddenly let fly with THIELnet, which retrofits existing speaker and sub models for the networked present and future. Using wireless technology from Bicon, better known in the telco industry, THIELnet offers either wireless or ethernet connections from either 5.1-channel or multiple stereo sources. The newly renovated models include the SCS4D stand-mount speaker (based on the SCS4) and the SS1D sub (based on the SS1). You go, Thiel.

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.