Tivoli Radio: Sweet Sound, Steep Price

Tivoli Audio makes great table radios. Basically, that's all you need to know if you want to buy a quality radio. Luckily, the company makes all different kinds, including its new NetWorks Internet receiver.

Tivoli is expert at making table radios. That's because the boss, Tom DeVesto, has been making them for years. He and his late partner, Henry Kloss, have created, manufactured or influenced every table radio designed in the past 40-plus years.

For the record, Mr. Kloss was a genius when it came to radio and speaker design. Beginning in the 1950s, Kloss was one of the founders of now-historic hi-fi companies such as Acoustic Research (loudspeaker designs), KLH (what do you think the "K" stands for?), Advent Corporation, Kloss Video, Cambridge SoundWorks and finally Tivoli Audio.

Starting with the legendary KLH Model 8 FM radio in the early '60s, Kloss was able to get true high-fidelity sound from small table radios. The most modern version, Tivoli's modest little Model One radio, is still an amazing-sounding unit.

But times are changing. AM radio is not for critical music listening. And it's difficult to find much high-quality programming or broadcast quality on FM. If you're willing to pay a monthly fee for satellite radio, Tivoli makes a model that includes a Sirius receiver.

But Internet radio is all the rage. Internet radios are really small, single-purpose computers made to look like radios. They allow you to stream music from Internet radio stations (more than 5,000 of them) or your home computer's hard drive via an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection.