The classes at the IBS were great but having been to a few shows already I knew who the really good teachers were and I spent a lot more time on the show room floor than I have in times past. I skipped all the silly games, although the value of all the prizes given away was said to be in excess of a million dollars and the attendance was down 10% to only 192,000 so the odds would have been fairly good. I should have brought my mother-in-law who would have made a full time job of entering all the contests and would have undoubtedly come home with some really great stuff. But I was solo other than hanging out with Dan Morrison and all the good folks from Fine Homebuilding and Environmental Building News so here are the best of the gleanings form my time on the floor.

The booth advertised invisible speakers and I walked in to a flat screen with an all star band in a plain room with no speakers but great surround sound. Deep bass crisp highs white paint. It turns out the speakers look like two foot square pieces of sheetrock with nail pattern marked so you don't damage the electronics and a self re-set breaker inside to prevent you from burning them out. I didn't ask how loud it would go but it was definitely party level in there.

I've been a Bose fan for years and these may not have been quite as crisp as that but I would definitely put them in my own house.

Many of my clients already have a serious investment in home audio and video components and a collection of music on PC and MP3 players and just want to find an affordable way to integrate the many parts into a unified system. The Hi Fi by Hai (sorry about that name fellas) is a system that connects all the various stuff you already own into a central system while allowing you to leave them distributed all around the house. The tuner in the living room can feed the news to the speakers in the kitchen in the morning, the computer in the office can now feed tunes to the kitchen in the afternoon and the game on the TV can feed audio to the kitchen in the evening. It's a great idea. As with all this electronic stuff I want to see it work in real life before I completely but in but this does look like a great solution to a persistent problem. Plus the system uses the energy efficient Class D amplifiers that use much less power and virtually no power on standby. This is NOT and audiophile solution like the Bose home audio but works with the audiophile equipment you already own to project good quality sound throughout your home.