Premiere Design

As a musician, I'm well acquainted with Steinway pianos, but until recently, I was unaware that the company had entered the home-audio business with a subsidiary called <A href="http://www.steinwaylyngdorf.com">Steinway Lyngdorf</A> in collaboration with Peter Lyngdorf of <A href="http://www.lyngdorf.com">Lyngdorf Audio</A>. Among its super-expensive speaker offerings is the LS line, a modular in-wall system based on the concept of a line source, in which a vertical stack of drivers delivers smooth horizontal dispersion and sound levels that fall off more gradually with distance than point-source speakers. As a result, the difference in volume between the front and back rows is less than it otherwise would be.

Great Britain has long been home to many excellent high-end audio companies, including <A href="http://www.chordelectronics.co.uk">Chord Electronics</A>. One of its newest offerings is the uncompromising CPA8000, Chord's ultimate 2-channel preamp.

One of the hallmarks of twentieth-century physics is the development of quantum mechanics, which describes the properties of matter and energy at very small scales. At its heart, this highly abstruse and esoteric branch of physics is actually quite simple: all matter and energy ultimately consists of discrete units or "packets" called quanta.

According to <A href="http://www.pure-vox.com">Purevox</A>, the company is "a new brand, a new guy in the hi-fi industry." If so, it's initial offerings are mighty impressive, at least in terms of design and price. Take, for example, the PV-Flagship turntable, which employs magnetic suspension to levitate the belt-driven main platter 2 centimeters above the subplatter, eliminating any friction between them.

The debate over the sound of vacuum tubes versus solid-state audio electronics has endured since the invention of the transistor, and it's not likely to be settled any time soon. With the new C-60 CD player from Australian boutique maker <A href="http://www.vincentaudio.com.au">Vincent Audio</A>, there's no need to decide&#151;you can switch between its tube-based and solid-state output stages as desired.

When Lars Engstr&#246;m built his first first amplifier at age 12 in his native Sweden, he could hardly have foreseen where it would take him. But his passion and talent for audio engineering eventually led him to found <A href="http://www.thelars.se">Engstr&#246;m & Engstr&#246;m</A> in 2009 with his nephew Timo, an industrial designer whose skills complement those of Lars perfectly.

The human hearing system is exquisitely sensitive to directional cues that let us instantly determine where a sound is coming from. This was critical for our survival in prehistory when the snap of a twig or a low growl might be the only harbinger of impending doom in the jaws of a hungry predator.