As an A/V enthusiast, you might well be familiar with Kaleidescape, a California-based maker of high-end movie servers. UAV hasn't covered its products lately because we are dedicated to high def, and they have been limited to serving DVDs—until now. The company today announced the introduction of full support for Blu-ray with its new M-Class architecture.

Audiophiles know well the name Musical Fidelity, a high-end British manufacturer for more than 30 years. The self-proclaimed culmination of all that experience is the Titan 2-channel power amp.

I've written about line-array speakers in this blog several times, and for good reason—tall stacks of drivers deliver smooth horizontal dispersion and sound levels that fall off more gradually than point-source speakers, creating a coherent, open soundstage. That's the idea behind the so-called iso-linear speakers from American maker Scaena, whose name is Latin for "stage."

Ever since its founding in 1926, German speaker maker Elac—short for Electroacustic—has never been one to rest on its laurels. Its engineers continue to improve the company's already well-regarded speakers with refinements and innovations that push the performance envelope. Take, for example, the FS 609 CE, Elac's flagship tower speaker that packs a lot of advanced technology into a slender form factor.

When Bang & Olufsen hosts a press event, it doesn't mess around. Last week, the king of Danish A/V design unveiled a new member of its flat-panel lineup at the Kopeikin art gallery in Los Angeles, and journalists got to see the BeoVision 10 in action as we sipped Dom Perignon and nibbled on gouda-apple pizza and other delicacies.

As a musician, I'm well acquainted with Steinway pianos, but until recently, I was unaware that the company had entered the home-audio business with a subsidiary called Steinway Lyngdorf in collaboration with Peter Lyngdorf of Lyngdorf Audio. Among its super-expensive speaker offerings is the LS line, a modular in-wall system based on the concept of a line source, in which a vertical stack of drivers delivers smooth horizontal dispersion and sound levels that fall off more gradually with distance than point-source speakers. As a result, the difference in volume between the front and back rows is less than it otherwise would be.

Great Britain has long been home to many excellent high-end audio companies, including Chord Electronics. One of its newest offerings is the uncompromising CPA8000, Chord's ultimate 2-channel preamp.