The Usher Be-718 is a remarkable loudspeaker and a great achievement for its size and price. What makes the Be-718s special is its extremely low levels of tonal, dynamic, textural, and spatial colorations. This reduction in distortions allows the Be-718 to get out of the music’s way to a degree that is unprecedented in a loudspeaker of this price, in my experience. But the icing on the cake is the Be-718’s unlikely combination of treble resolution with smoothness, a characteristic that fosters an immediate and deep involvement with the music. The Be-718 makes it easy to forget you’re listening to a reproduction rather than to music itself.