May 18, 2007
All prices in euros or US dollars.
1 €  is approximately $1.36 at time of report.

Finland's Amphion had two new speakers at High End 2007. Shown above is the Ion XL priced at € 1280 per pair. It is a slightly larger version of the company’s popular Ion and can deliver fuller, deeper bass. Amphion also showed the floorstanding Prio (€ 2300 per pair), which features a 1" titanium-dome tweeter and dual 5.25" Nomex bass drivers. Both speakers are sleek in a Finnish sort of way and exhibit beautiful cabinetwork, something the company has long been known for. Oh yeah, and they both have that funky Amphion waveguide for better-controlled dispersion.

Penaudio is also from Finland, and also debuted some new speakers. The Ambient Series sports more traditional cosmetics than the previous finishes the company has been known for, but they still show flourishes of creativity, including the way the curved middle piece mates with the outer portions, something for which the company received a worldwide patent. Shown above is the Rogue 6 bookshelf speaker priced at € 1395. There is also a Rogue Center speaker available for those into multichannel for € 995. And for those who don't want a speaker that requires stands, there's also the floorstanding, three-way Chronos priced at € 5995 per pair.

Japanese electronics maker Luxman had a bevy of new products on display. Shown here is the affordable SQ-N100, a 12Wpc integrated amplifier that uses EL84 tubes and retails for € 2400. The matching D-N100 CD player with its innovative drive mechanism was also on display and retails for € 1500. Luxman also showed...

...the L-509u integrated amplifier, which retails for € 8000 and delivers 240Wpc into 8 ohms. (8000E). There was also the gorgeously built M800A, a stereo power amp rated to deliver 60W of class-A power into 8 ohms and a whopping 960 watts of peak power into a 1-ohm load. The M800A retails for € 9900.

If the Lyngdorf Audio products look familiar, it is no coincidence. Peter Lyngdorf, whom you may remember from Tact Audio, is now out on his own and producing the same cutting-edge products that his customers have come to expect. We were most interested in the DPA-1 digital preamplifier (bottom, € 4500E) and the RP-1 room processor (€ 3500). Both products feature Lyngdorf’s RoomPerfect room-correction system, which works entirely in the digital domain and, the company claims, is its most advanced implementation yet. Furthermore, Lyngdorf says the system is pretty easy to operate, claiming that you can have it up and running in less than half an hour.

Krell's Kid (Krell IPod Dock, get it?) is basically a super-duper iPod dock that features bass and treble controls, volume control, balanced outputs and more. It's priced at $1200. Krell also showed a prototype of the upcoming Modulare Duo two-piece loudspeaker system, which, like the LAT-series speakers, has a cabinet machined from aluminum, making it heavy to say the least. It features three 8" woofers, a 1" Scan-Speak ring-radiator tweeter, and a 6.5" midrange driver. According to Krell reps, this is the only pair in the world on public display. The Modulare Duo is priced at $35,000 per pair.