THE HOUSE THAT iPOD BUILT.

For Audiophiles, Apple Computer's iPod has always been a conundrum. It's a slick-looking device that gets gadget freaks salivating. But the iPod is an island of tunes, miles away from the professionally installed audio systems that pipe music into rooms throughout the house. There has never been an elegant way to bridge the two worlds.

But, like car- and home-stereo makers before them, the companies that develop high-end audio gear are starting to jump on the iPod bandwagon. Their "whole-home" systems have long allowed you to listen to music in any room of the house and remotely control tunes using screens or keypads that can turn up the sound in the bedroom or turn off speakers in the den. Now they're coming out with gadgets that let you pop your iPod into a dock when you walk in the front door and listen to your favorite music throughout the house.

But beware: These entries are not for the light of pocket -- and they're far from perfect. The iPod adapters run $600 to $800, and that's just one piece of the puzzle. To make the adapters work, you need to plug them into systems that include amplifiers, speakers, touch-pad remotes, and distributed audio servers that let you play whatever music you want in whatever room you happen to be in. These whole-home systems start at about $5,000 and can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

The sound invariably rocks, since no one who is spending that much money on audio gear is going to skimp on speakers or amplifiers. So the best way to compare iPod adapters is to evaluate their ease of use. The iPod's brilliance, more than anything else, lies in the elegance of its navigation. It's a breeze to zip through thousands of songs to find the right one in a matter of seconds. For any whole-home audio system to measure up, users need to be able to pick and choose music as if the iPod were in the palm of their hand.

Only one of the three systems I tested met that benchmark -- Crestron's $700 CEN-iPod. And it did so only because it was hooked up to a 15-inch touch-screen monitor, also made by Crestron, that costs $12,000. And that's for one monitor. To fully use your iPod throughout your home, you would need a monitor in every room where you want your music. (Crestron also offers touch-screen monitors starting at $1,250 for a 3.6-inch screen.)

The CEN-iPod won't be available until March. But if you have the money and the hankering for iPod everywhere, it's worth the wait. At the center of the touch screen is an oversize image of an iPod. To navigate through your collection, you can tap the Menu button on the screen with your finger. Up pops listings for artists, albums, and songs. Spin your finger around the scroll-wheel part of the picture, and you're zipping through your music. Pretty slick. To play a tune, you can press the center Select button. Or you can do something you can't even do on an iPod: tap the song name onto the screen to start the music.