Sony Qualia 010

Sony Qualia 010: Priced at over $2500, slapped with a painfully pretentious name and jinxed forever to be rejected by mainstream-averse audiophiles, these futuristic headphones were doomed from the start. But whatever, these are subtly good-looking cans, blending in for day-to-day use but revealing meticulous design and construction on close examination. (Image from Head-fi)
Sony Qualia 010

Opera Sonora Speakers

Opera Sonora Speakers: Every once in a while, questionably scientific theories of audiophilia result in extremely handsome products. That's the story of the Opera Sonora line of speakers. The theory: Bolting little speaker driver on to the back of tonewood—the same stuff used in high-end violins—will provide a rich, warm sound. The result: Speakers that look like they were designed by a reanimated Antonio Stradivari, with a sound—well, not many people have actually heard them yet.
Opera Sonora Speakers

Harman Kardon Soundsticks II

Harman Kardon Soundsticks: You've seen this at Apple Store and Best Buys for years, but they're due some credit: they bring a stunning transparent aesthetic to mainstream buyers, perfectly complementing a generation of Apple hardware while being generally gorgeous enough to be appealing to the PC crowd too. You'd still be hard-pressed to find a lovelier set of speakers for under $200.
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Lightning Round: V-Moda Vibe Duo (With iPhone Call Button)

The Gadget: The V-Moda Vibe Duo iPhone headphones, which combine V-Moda's great price to quality ratio with a thin, iPhone-compatible headphone jack with an on-board music/call control button.

The Price: $99

The Verdict: These sound just as good (both incoming and outgoing) as the older Vibe Duos without the call button, and definitely just as good as the older Vibes without the iPhone integration. If you've got an iPhone, they're pretty much an all-in-one solution to replace the sub-par default Apple headphones with something that still has an on-board call button and much, much better sound quality. Pick one up if you're in the market for some iPhone buds.
gizmodo

Sony Sountina Glass Speaker Rocks You for $10,000

Sony's sci-fi looking 6-foot glass speaker is turning into an actual product: the Sountina NSA-PF1—designed for larger rooms and halls—will give you a 50Hz to 20kHz frequency response, analog and digital audio inputs, and a blue, amber or purple-lit 3-foot organic glass tweeter for just $10,000.
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Montegiro Lusso Turntable Won't Give You Much Change from $50,000

This Montegiro Lusso turntable looks like it should be teamed with something '60s and space-age from Pierre Cardin and worn atop the head. It consists of three height-adjustable cones made from alternate layers of acrylic and aluminum, and a larger, inverted cone, on top of which sits the platter. The turntable rocks a 10-inch Da Vinci Nobile carbon-fiber arm, MG1 titanium cartridge and it's powered by an ultra precise synchronous motor. A special version of the $47,000 turntable has another cone, which supports a second, nine-inch SME 5009 tonearm. Sexy or excessy? Check the gallery below.
gizmodo

Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 5 is a Reasonable Media Controller (For Your Megayacht)

When Bang & Olufsen, maker of very expensive things that use electricity, let slip a photo of their upcoming BeoSound 5 home media controller, I saw a lot of potential. The interface looked nice, the hardware classy, and the screen crisp — in other words, if this thing connected with network music shares and played nice with a variety of home A/V equipment, it could be a winner. Well, we've got our hands on the official announcement, and it looks like we might have been a little optimistic.

The control unit is as stunning as the early, blurry pics had implied. With a sharp 1024x768 screen, a brushed aluminum control knob and an attractive, minimalist interface it would be a treat to use as a home media controller. Unfortunately, if predictably, it is only compatible with one product, which is, you guessed it, a Bang & Olufsen server. Called the 500GB BeoMaster 5, the box is a largely unchanged followup to the company's $2700 BeoMedia media center PC.
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Freewheeler Speaker Can Be Rolled Around: Yeah, That Makes it Worth $21,000

Sonnance Freewheeler: Continuing the simple-but-perfect theme, the Sonnance Freewheeler is a wireless speaker disc, about the size of a car's wheel and able to run for about 8 hours on a full charge. It's also $21,000, but that neither here nor there, "here" being "within the range of you to buy" and "there" being "at all worth it, even if it was." But, pretty!
Home Entertainment

The Speak-er Brings Speech Bubbles Into the 21st Century

Speak-er: Spawned by a playful concept that nobody honestly expected to get made, the Speak-er isn't fancy, powerful or technologically impressive. It's a dead-simple desktop speaker in a fantastic shell, which opens up a slew of design possibilities for your office, room, or live-action comic book troupe.
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Clearaudio Statement

Somewhere along the way, audiophiles became as obsessed with look as with sound quality. So set aside for a minute your ears and your skepticism: Here are the world's most beautiful-looking audio devices.

The ClearAudio Statement: At $100,000 the ClearAudio Statement, seen above, is everything that is wrong with the audiophile culture, combined into one four-foot, 770lb, variously suspended, NASA-electronics-adorned turntable (check out a full-length shot here). But it's a design triumph, coaxing a polished, demure aesthetic out of what should by all means be an ostentatious CNC-machined mess.
Clearaudio Statement

Lenovo netbook with built-in 3G hits the FCC -- destined for AT&T?

The Lenovo S9 and S10 have already been approved by the FCC, so the appearance of this mysterious nine-inch Lenovo netbook in Uncle Sam's all-knowing database is certainly thought-provoking -- especially since it's got a built-in AT&T-compatible 3G card in it. That suggests to us that Ma Bell's about to start offering a subsidized S9 alongside its current stable of laptops, but we haven't seen or heard anything definitive yet -- do let us know if you spot something amazing in the SAR reports, would you?
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