Premiere Design

Poet Audio Pandoretta 360° Wireless Sound System

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.

With his magical hammer Mjöllnir, the Norse god Thor is said to have produced thunder. So there is no more appropriate name than Thor's Hammer for the ultimate subwoofer from Wilson Audio. In fact, this monster might have put Thor himself to shame, since it can reproduce frequencies even lower than natural thunder.

Note: This is NOT an UltimateAVmag.com contest; the name of the company profiled here is Win Analog.

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.

Last year in this blog, I profiled the high-end DCX-series 3-chip DLP projectors from Wolf Cinema. Last week, I joined Tom Norton and Shane Buettner for a tour of Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, CA, where DCX projectors are being used in two historic screening rooms.

At the 2008 CEDIA Expo, I was surprised to find a new high-end projector company making its debut. Could <A href="http://www.wolfcinema.com">Wolf Cinema</A> successfully cross light paths with the likes of Runco and Digital Projection?

Stereo consoles were all the rage in the ’60s. Every major TV company sold them—some with an integrated 25-inch screen, some without. Many were imposing pieces of furniture placed front and center in living rooms across America. I have vivid memories of paying $3 or $4 for my first album at the long-gone Jersey-based chain store Two Guys and promptly replacing the Engelbert Humperdinck LP on the platter of our Zenith console with Abbey Road.