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The Lotus Group's Granada speaker ($125,000/pair) combines 21st-century technology—a digital-domain crossover realized with DSP, including room correction—with distinctively retro loudspeaker engineering—frequencies above 200Hz are handled by a single Feastrex unit featuring a field-coil magnet and a paper diaphragm with a coincident "whizzer" cone. The paper used for the diaphragms is sourced from a Japanese "National Treasure" paper maker, Ichibei Iwano, and the surrounds are made from lambs' skin. Two woofer handle the bass and all three drivers are open at the back to give a dipole radiation pattern. There is also a rear-firing 0.75" dome tweeter to maintain the speaker's power response in the top octave. (The treble energy from the whizzer is emitted in a quite narrow frontal beam.)

My photo doesn't do justice to the beauty of this speaker; the rest of the system included Musical Fidelity AMS-50 class-A amplifiers, a Steve McCormack VRE-18 preamp, a Hanss T-10A turntable with phono stage and fitted with Dynavector DRT XV-1t cartridge,with interconnects and power cabling by Pranawire and speaker cabling by Acoustic Revive. Total system costs was $324,245! Listening to Joan Armatrading's "Show Some Emotion" then the Roy DuNann-recorded The Eleven LP by Art Pepper, I was struck by the effortless nature of the sound and the sheer musicality of the system, though I have to admit that instruments didn't quite sound tonally correct.

The Antique Sound Lab AQ 1003 Mk.II DT integrated amplifier ($1495) is optimized for EL34 tubes and provides 30Wpc. Though the basic design has been in production for over 15 years, the MK.II DT version has been updated with an attractive extruded-aluminum chassis and improved winding technique for the transformers. These same improvements can now also be found in ASL’s 50Wpc AQ 1001 Mk.II DT ($1995), which, according to Divergent Technologies’ Tash Goka, represents the company’s “best value for money.”

The electrostatic Kingsound speakers were hits at 2010 Shows, so I was anticipating good sound in the room where VAC was demming their tubed electronics with the King II speakers ($11,500/pair) and a Spiral Groove SG2 turntable and arm fitted with a Lyra Kleos cartridge. Stands were all-Symposium.)

The bugbears of electrostatic panels have been limited treble dispersion and a lack of low-frequency definition, but listening to Hans Theesink's and Terry Evans' rendition of "You Can't Tell a Book," from the LP Vision, where the guitarist and singer were accompanying themselves with footstomps, the bass remained in control and the top-octave sounded airy and spacious.

CES 2011 was the Show of the Android tablet. Once form has followed function into the form of a movable picture in the palm of your hand, buttons have disappeared into the picture, weight trends towards zero, and, like the first wind-tunnel designed cars of the ‘90s, everything looks astonishingly alike.

I don’t know if Archos has the bitchen’ box, but their cred as a long-time portable audio player maker had me going to their booth and not the bazillion others. Their gadget was fun to play with (just like all the other Driods out there), and sure, I’d like to play more with an Android tablet . . . it is cool stuff. I hope Archos does well in the sea of tablet competition, but wow, tablets have been overwhelming this year.

Bon chance, mes amis!

Bladelius has created a gorgeous product that includes a touch screen on the front and can play discs, stream media and store music. Hand made in Sweden and retailing for around $9,000, the Embla features internal flash memory for storing music (upgradable to 2TB!!), USB and Ethernet on the back, and built-in analog preamplifier.

Here is a close-up of the Qsonix iPad app that offered real-time scrolling through album covers in addition to the playlist editing.

Cambridge has created the NP30 (the bottom product in this photo) as the bridge between your digital media and a stereo system. As such, it has a built-in Wolfson 24bit/96kHz DAC, two USB connectors, Wifi, Ethernet and SPDIF coax and optical outputs. It can handle most audio file formats and also stream internet radio. I was surprised that it did not have an SPDIF input of any kind.

There is a small display on the front and you can also control the NP30 with your iPhone and their app. Price is $649 and it is available now.