JVC has just released its new home theater system based on their Sake driver technology. If you haven't heard about this, a JVC engineer in Japan discovered that wood soaked in sake (the rice wine, of course) can be molded into functional speaker drivers. I'm sure there's some great story behind how he made that discovery, but, alas, I have not heard it. (Though I do hear Spielberg is working on the film adaptation. Charlize Theron will transform herself into the alcoholic Japanese engineer and, of course, there's already talk of another Oscar triumph).

Pictured is the 3" wood woofer and a wood dome tweeter. Very bizarre to see actual wood grain on the driver itself but, then again, not as strange as drivers made out of hemp or bananas (Omega and Fostex, respectively). Of course, then there's Panasonic getting all hot and heavy about their bamboo drivers. Strange, because bamboo has been around high-end for a number of years now.

The new system with the incredibly hip name of EX-A10 comes in at $1000 and is one of those "home theater in a box with 2 speakers and gobs of processing" affairs. Here's the tech details. See if you care:

To provide theater-like audio performance from such a small system, the EX-A10 features JVC's Hybrid Feedback digital amplifier, a compact, highly efficient design that generates high power output with low distortion levels. The system is bi-amplified, with 30 watts per channel driving the mid/bass speakers and 20 watts per channel driving the tweeters. To further ensure the best possible sound quality, the system employs JVC's K2 and CC Converter (Compression Compensative) technologies, also found in JVC's top-end AV receivers, which improves the sound quality of both CDs and music files, such as MP3 and WMA files. The system can play both DVD Video and DVD Audio discs and provides two-channel decoding of Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound signals.

Is there some marketing school teaching these people to confuse the hell out of consumers? Ah well, at least they're flogging the Sake Driver thing for all it's worth:

What truly sets the EX-A10 apart are its wood cone speakers. To deliver a warm, natural sound, each speaker cone is made of a solid sheet of wood, which has acoustic properties that make it ideal speaker material. But it's a design that was 20 years in the making because forming the wood sheets into a speaker cone proved daunting – they would crack. Countless techniques were tried, but proved ineffective, until a surprising solution was found – sake, or Japanese rice wine. JVC engineers discovered that when soaked in sake, a birch wood sheet becomes soft and pliable enough to be pressed into speaker cones without splitting.

While it may sound brilliant, the vast majority of these little systems I've heard are just terrible. Though I haven't spent any quality time with the wooden drivers, I can think of one better way to spend 20 years and countless resources: a remote control turntable. You think I'm joking.