Darryl Wilkinson

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the folks at SpeakerCraft think it's quite possible you've never seen a more beautiful rear - speaker, that is.

Hang a blue ribbon on the wall for these planar-driver speakers.

To stand out from the crowd, a speaker (or any product) needs to have a gimmick. "Gimmick" is too harsh of a word, really. "Unique element of differentiation" is too clinical but more on the mark. Maybe I should say, "thingamajig." On-wall speakers used to stand out from the crowd by their ability not to stand out. They were slim, contemporary in style, and loosely matched the flatness of plasma TVs, plus, until recently, only a handful were on the market. In some cases, these speakers were even voiced to sound their best when mounted on a wall. (Imagine that.) But on-wall speakers are no longer unusual. They're everywhere, including in some HTIB systems. Differentiation is definitely different now—it's a heck of a lot harder to do.

Ace Bayou Corp. is adding two new chairs to the company's X sound furniture line. The new RelaX-I and Xsoothe are brown and leather, full recliners with built-in sound systems that connect to just about anything with an audio output (MP3 players, portable DVD players, handheld and console game machines, and home theater systems). The two new recliners will also include the option of built-in massage.

Praise the Lord, and pass the remote.

Sometimes an idea is so appealing—world-shaping concepts like communism, capitalism, free love, or spandex clothing—that it blinds believers to shortcomings that are otherwise glaringly obvious to those on the jaded, dispassionate periphery. We may look down our noses and scoff, yet it's hard to dismiss the power of simple belief.