Damon Runyon could have made a big deal out of Francesco Dente's name, 'dente' being Italian for those enamelled things in your mouth. So, if Francesco moved to New York and joined the Mob, he'd probably be known as "Frankie the Tooth". But he doesn't live in New York and he's not a gangster. Instead, he produces loudspeakers in Italy and he just may be the only maker there who has the guts not to rip off Sonus Faber's curvaceous style. His MTD speakers all employ cabinets in the shape of truncated pyramids and they haven't got so much as a splinter's worth of sculpted walnut anywhere to be seen.

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'Splinter' is an apt word, as I borrowed for review the very pair which MTD used at the Hi-Fi Show at Heathrow last September, and cosmetically they were the worse for wear. But the MTDs were still handsome in all their mahogany glory; the chips and dents merely readied them for The Antiques Roadshow circa 2040.

Dente, a fastidious and refined individual, would appear to have an obsession about vibration and resonance. In addition to the obviopyramidal enclosures mean no parallel sides and therefore the minimising of internal standing waves -- the is made from exceptionally dense multi-layered hardwoodI think) has applications in boat-building.

Called Lariphon, the material consists of cross-ply layers of wood with a central layer formed from lead-treated rubber. This dampens any residual vibrations while isolating the speaker's internals from radio frequencies. (I didn't try the MTDs next to a TV set to see if the shielding would prevent the greening of your Trinitron. Sorry.) The material is carefully machined using special milling techniques and a special bonding agent is used to fix the cabinet walls. Four high-gloss finishes are available, including ebony, mahogany, 'natural' (which looks like light oak) and something called Palissandro, a reddish finish which my Collins Gem doesn't define but which might be rosewood.

(named after the wee boats which perform way beyond what their size suggests)the in the catalogue,ing,a pointy-toedwhich measures []