Brent Butterworth

The Mordaunt-Short Aviano 6 tower speaker reminds me why it’s sometimes best to hold out for something you truly love instead of something that merely gets the job done.As we age, we often give up the pursuit of the great and settle for the good. We settle for sedans instead of sports cars because they get us to work every day.

Like panthers or hamsters or bats, video projectors do the bulk of their business in the dark. But darkness makes most humans uncomfortable, which may be why front projection has never made it into the mainstream — in order to get a good picture, you have to turn most, and preferably all, of the lights off.

In Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley, where I live, “naked” is all the rage. That’s not just because the Valley is the world capital of adult video production. It’s also because the SFV is home to several of America’s leading speaker reviewers. Don’t worry — as far as I know, the reviewers are keeping their clothes on. But many of the speakers they review are not.