Cocktail Audio

The "Swiss Army Knife" metaphor has been applied to many audio products, but the metaphor has never been more apt than referring to the new Cocktail Audio X30 ($1899). Made in Korea and imported to North America by Audio Plus/Plurison, the X30 is described as an "all-in-one HD music server/network streamer/CD storage." However, that doesn't describe all of its capabilities. If you look at the connections in the back (bottom of the picture), you'll see speaker connections, so it's also an amplifier. (I'm not sure, but I think the number in the model designation indicates the watts per channel.)

Analog and digital in, analog out, HDMI (audio only), Ethernet, USB host, wireless antenna, removable HDD storage (comes with 500 GIG)—the Cocktail Audio X30 has it all. Perhaps even more important, I was told by the Audio Plus/Plurison folks that the company that makes the X30 is highly responsive to feedback about the product and devoted to product improvement: Audio Plus/Plurison's technical people made some suggestions to Cocktail Audio based on a prototype, and the manufacturer got back to them in two weeks, having incorporated the suggestions.

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