It took the prospect of entertaining friends in a large room to get me to knuckle down and buy a fuller, larger speaker. I have a couple of smaller BlueTooth speakers: one for the road, the other in the kitchen that I also take out to my patio. But they don't deliver the kind of sound needed for a large, two-story great room with sound-absorbing rugs, upholstery fabrics, and draperies.

Have thought about Tivoli products in the past, and a grad school advisor had a sweet little receiver in his office that I always admired -- which means I was already a sucker for the form factor. I suppose that, in the end, is what sold me.

But here's the thing, we have it placed on a wall where basically it is not really visible! Buy boy can you hear it! It has all the rich, velvety tones I remember from my old ca. 1970's style tower speakers powered by a massive, glowing rack of hardware. But with the SongBook, I get all that sound in a fraction of the footprint and price.

Has anyone else discussed the heft and tactile splendor of this unit? It's almost twelve pounds, and the dials have the haptic gravitas of an analog instrument panel on the space station. There is a precision and seriousness that is dee[ly satisfying -- multiple sensory modes (sight, sound, touch) overlapping and reinforcing another about the experiential quality at hand.

And the full range of sound is, to my ears, profoundly superior to competitors in the same price category -- and several standard deviations…