Brent Butterworth

Home theater enthusiasts have had seven speakers in their systems for a decade now, but only now is Hollywood finally catching up. Last Saturday, Dolby Laboratories feted the release of the Megamind Blu-ray Disc, which it says is the first movie released in 7.1-channel sound in theaters and on Blu-ray. A screening of the Blu-ray Disc in the company's technically unassailable theater was preceded by a discussion with Erik Aadahl, one of the movie's two supervising sound editors.

The Internet has come alive with cheers of audiophiles and jeers of audiophobes since CNN.com reported unconfirmed rumors that download services such as iTunes and Amazon MP3 would soon begin offering music files with 24-bit resolution. Technically, this is a step up from the 16-bit resolution available in most downloads. But predictably, non-audiophiles are criticizing this move as little more than a naked marketing ploy.

I have a confession to make: I've been a woofer wuss for most of my career as an audio journalist. When I started 21 years ago, there weren't many good subwoofers, and the little ones were usually less bad than the big ones, so I stuck mostly with smaller subs for my personal systems.

Do you trust your ears? I don't. By that I mean I don't trust my ears. Frankly, though, I don't trust anybody's. I've heard laymen enthuse about systems that had little more to offer than a few notes of booming bass. I've heard audio veterans trash impeccably engineered speakers - and praise speakers that showed glaring technical flaws.