Speakers, 2010

For home theater, speakers need a lot of power handling. For music, they need to be tonal accurate, as well as handle powerful transients. TV and home theater are synonymous. Gaming is low-fi.

Excluding custom builds, the best speakers (from an engineering perspective) are probably the Revel Ultima series. They use beryllium drivers, fantastic crossovers, and top-notch build quality. Beryllium has no peer as an audio transducer material--it's light, it's fast (2-3 times faster than aluminum or titanium), and it has an inaudible resonant frequency.

The Salon 2 is the flagship at $22,000/pair. The Studio 2s are just as good if paired with a subwoofer, such as the JL Fathom F113 ($3700); the Studio 2s run at $16,000/pair. The center channel is one of the best 3 ways ever designed, and runs at $7,000/ea. And the surrounds, the Gem2s, are $10,000/pair. They are heavy for bookshelves (40lbs) and could easily be run as mains with a sub woofer or two.