Premiere Design

When it comes to hotbeds of high-end audio, South Africa is not the first place that comes to mind. Yet this is the home of <A href="http://www.vividaudio.com">Vivid Audio</A>, maker of beautifully curvaceous speakers, including the flagship Giya, which is available in two versions&#151;the original G1 and the new, smaller G2 introduced at CES 2010.

As I was looking for products to profile in this blog, I came across something astonishing - a tube-based monoblock power amp that costs $350,000/pair! Hand-built by Japanese boutique maker Wavac Audio Lab, the SH-833 isn't new - it was reviewed in Stereophile in 2004 - but when I saw that price tag, I knew I had to include it here.

When I stumbled upon Poet Audio’s Pandoretta, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. I knew it was a speaker and not some sort of fancy air-filtration system, but what kind of speaker? Was it a new take on Yamaha’s Digital Sound Projector with an array of tiny drivers behind all those holes? It didn’t occur to me that the stainless steel “grille” might be an elaborate design element. Yet that’s exactly what it is.

One of the coolest-looking single-ended triode (SET) monoblock power amps I've seen in a long time comes from California-based Win Analog. Two versions are available—the S and V Series.

Among the myriad speakers introduced at CES were three new additions to the Sage Series from <A href="http://www.wisdomaudio.com">Wisdom Audio</A>. All three&#151;L150m, L100m, and C150m center-channel&#151;are on-wall models based on Wisdom's planar-magnetic, line-array design and intended to be placed behind an acoustically transparent projection screen.