Premiere Design

Founded in 2009, one of the newest kids on the audiophile block is California-based Constellation Audio. Not that its principal players are newbies by any means—in fact, Constellation has assembled a "dream team" of engineers and designers to create unparalleled audio products, among the first of which is the Hercules monoblock power amp.

Last year, I profiled the incredible—and incredibly expensive—La Sphère speaker from French maker Cabasse. Utilizing and updating much of the same technology found in that model, the company will soon release L'Océan with a price tag only slightly less than its progenitor.

Panasonic's 103-inch plasma is nothing new—we first saw it at the 2006 CES—and it's not even the largest plasma in production, an honor that goes to Panasonic's 152-inch behemoth. But last week, the company announced that it is taking pre-orders in Japan for an updated version of the 103-incher that now offers 3D capabilities.

After five years of developing high-end music servers, San Francisco-based Olive today unveils its flagship O6HD, designed from the ground up as a true audiophile digital-audio server. According to Dr. Oliver Bergmann, co-founder and CEO of Olive, nothing has been spared in bringing it to fruition.

As I was cruising the aisles at last week's Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention, I happened upon this huge toroidal power transformer from Plitron, which makes power products for professional and consumer A/V systems under the Torus Power brand name. (Thanks to former Stereophile writer Barry Willis, who generously offered his shoe to provide a sense of scale in this photo.)

The Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention isn't concerned with consumer products, but there's always a bit of crossover with the pro-audio items on display. For example, at last week's annual conclave in San Francisco, I found a new top-of-the-line headphone from Germany's Ultrasone. The Edition 10 is the company's first model in the Edition lineup to feature an open-back design, which took the company two years to develop. Also new to the Edition 10 is an oxygen-free copper (OFC), silver-plated, Kevlar-reinforced cable that can be easily configured for balanced or unbalanced connectors.

When I came across the website of Hungarian speaker maker Art & Voice, I could only gape slack-jawed at the incredible variety and artistry of its offerings. As the story goes, when the company's founder brought home some new speakers, his girlfriend immediately rejected them because they looked like two large coffins in the middle of their living room. This disappointing outcome inspired him to build speakers as works of visual as well as aural art.