LATEST ADDITIONS

Seldom in my life as an equipment reviewer has a product arrived that, out of the box, I've known I wanted to own. The Pioneer DV-AX10 is one of them—the first universal player that can handle CD, Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio, and DVD-Video, complete with progressive-scan video output. It's a wonder to behold and a joy to use.

Gestalt
Time after time, I find myself asking, "Now what did I go and say that for?" Recently, while sitting in our weekly staff editorial meeting, I once again opened myself up to an idea that would inevitably lead to more work for me. After requesting speaker systems to have on hand for review, I realized that they all shared one common similarity: They were all around $3,500 or less. I don't know of a retailer on this planet where you can audition Polk, Klipsch, and RBH speakers at the same time, yet I'm sure it will cross some reader's mind who's looking to spend that extra change under the mattress.

Unless you're looking at a powered speaker (with built-in amplification), the power-handling rating (which is often incorrectly referred to as the number of watts a speaker has) will tell you little about how the speaker integrates into your system, let alone how it sounds. This isn't to say that the spec is useless. After all, some people like to play music really loud—I'm talking head-near-the-speaker-stack-at-a-rock-concert loud. In those rare cases, this specification may be useful. However, for the rest of us, this is probably the least necessary information, even though it's usually the most common question we get about speakers.