Robert Harley writes in the April/May '04 TAS
about an interesting demo by David Wilson at
CES '04.

Wilson was setting his Sophia's against an unamed,
higher-priced speaker. When the curtain was lifted,
Wilson was driving the Sophias with a $1k Parasound
amp, using an Apple iPOD as the source.

Harley does not go into detail about the sound,
but declared Wilson the hands-down winner over the
more expensive speaker, driven by a $7k Krell amp
and Krell digital source. The implication is of
course that the iPOD+Parasound+Sophia combo sounded
pretty darn good.

As Harley indicates in the column, Wilson sought
to prove that even a moderate (cheap?) front-end
can sound good with the right speakers (not agreeing
here, just paraphrasing).

Interesting...

/jim