Your iPod is designed to hold flawless quality music. Whether it hits your ears in the same flawless condition is entirely up to whatever speaker system you pump it through. Plugging into a bad set of earbuds, or a cheap docking station, is like drinking a fine wine out of a dirty plastic cup.

Bowers & Wilkins, makers of the 800 Series speakers found in leading recording studios worldwide, have taken that same engineering and developed the Zeppelin, a compact docking system designed specifically to preserve the pristine sound quality of your music.

The Zeppelin's zeppelin shape was designed not only for looking cool in your living room, but is a nod to the 800's famous "pod" design. The tapered ends house the midrange and tweeter drivers, minimizing the baffle area around them, thereby "reducing diffraction effects, making for ultra-wide sound dispersion and a much smoother response." (That's a complex way of saying you get purer sound.)

A single 5-inch subwoofer sits in the middle while a pair of rear-firing ports enhance the bass performance. And while the body looks like a soft, Nerf-ish football, the cabinet is actually a high-strength composite shell that minimizes vibration so all you hear is the speakers themselves. And when you do hear them, the sound is crystal clear. Just the way the music gods intended.

Does all this high-end audio technology and sound perfection cost a lot more? Sure. Just like that bottle of fine wine costs more than the stuff that comes in a box at the supermarket. But you expected that.

$599
www.bowers-wilkins.com