Your kid borrows the car, blasts too many techno tracks, and blows out the subwoofer. It used to be that you´d have two choices: Buy a new one (woofer, not kid) or put up with a hoarse bass line. But when a subwoofer pops, it´s usually only the voice coil-the part that drives the cone-that´s burned out; the rest of the assembly is just fine. Boston Acoustics´s SPG555 subwoofer is the first with a replaceable voice coil that you can install yourself.

FROM A PORTABLE

Portable players aren't known as audiophile devices, but Sharp's MD-DS8 minidisc player (left, top) comes close, thanks to a 1-bit amplifier. The high-power amp requires very little juice, so the MD-DS8 gets an amazing 180 hours of playback.

Sharp




FROM TWO SPEAKERS