Premiere Design

For most audiophiles, speakers are the last link in the signal chain before the music reaches their ears. But the acoustic interaction between the speakers and the room can cause all sorts of problems that are completely avoided by using headphones instead. And the ultimate headphones are widely considered to come from Japanese maker Stax, especially the flagship SR-007 MK2. Unlike most products I profile here, I actually got to try these amazing headphones for myself, and it was an experience not soon forgotten.

And now for something completely different—a subwoofer that looks like a fan and can reproduce frequencies down to 1Hz and below. Yep, you read that right—1Hz and below. Developed by Bruce Thigpen and available from Eminent Technology, the Thigpen Rotary Woofer Model 17 (TRW-17) breaks entirely new ground at the very bottom of the sonic spectrum.

The Italian high-end bastion Sonus Faber is well known among audiophiles for its superb speakers. Just over a month ago, the company introduced its latest creation—the Fenice—at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice.

Perhaps best known for founding and heading Sonus Faber from 1983 to 2005, Franco Serblin now has a new venture—the Ktêma speaker, named for the Greek expression, Ktêma eis aei, "a possession forever."

Network music servers perform several distinct functions—acquiring and storing digital-audio files, managing and selecting what you want to listen to, streaming those files over a wired and/or wireless network, and receiving those files so the music can be played on a sound system. Most music-server products provide all these functions in an integrated system, but Scottish high-end long-timer Linn has taken a different approach. It's Digital Stream players, including the flagship Klimax DS, are strictly client devices that receive audio streams from the network and play them on any sound system.

Photo courtesy Surround Sounds, Perth, Australia

If you've been reading about home theater for any length of time, you've probably heard of Stewart Filmscreen, a family-owned company that represents the lion's share of the consumer and commercial projection-screen market. Its product range is vast, so I'll focus on three high-end home-oriented offerings—CineCurve, Director's Choice 2.0, and StarGlas.