LATEST ADDITIONS

I'm old enough to remember walking to the neighborhood record shop, buying a record, taking it home, and listening to it. My biggest worry was that the record might have a scratch on it, or might even be warped. Oh, how times have changed.

We didn’t really plan it this way but two of our Top Picks for April have more than just A/V in common — they both sell for less than 200 bucks. Our first low-cost specimen is a no-frills subwoofer from a brand you may not know that delivers surprisingly respectable performance down to 30 Hz. Then there’s an all-around great performing portable speaker from a brand you most definitely do know. Rounding out the mix is a serious desktop speaker setup and a sweet sounding home theater ensemble from an exotic brand whose speakers you thought you couldn’t afford.

PRICE $5,296

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Crisp detail and open-sounding midrange
Immersive 5.1 performance
Stylish and affordable
Minus
Cl center speaker has limited off-axis response

THE VERDICT
The name Sonus faber conjures up visions of exotic speakers priced at a level that will buy you a reasonably nice house in some places. But a full 5.1 package from the company's new Lumina line will cost you less than a modest patio upgrade.

Loudspeaker manufacturer Sonus faber was founded in the early 1980s by the late Franco Serblin in Vicenza, Italy. It's been known since then for offering superb sound with classic Italian attention to style, with products aimed at buyers for whom price was at most a secondary consideration. But in recent years the company has tested more affordable waters, particularly in its home theater offerings, with the latest addition to its lineup, the Lumina Collection, designed to appeal to a wider range of listeners with real-world budgets.

British hi-fi titan Bowers & Wilkins (a.k.a. B&W) has expanded its small but growing line of headphones with two sets of wireless earbuds, one of which provides a “true 24-bit” audio connection, adaptive noise cancellation, and Bluetooth 5.0 featuring aptX HD and aptX Adaptive audio processing.