The Bamberg Audio Series 5 TMW ($8250) is a two-piece speaker that mounts a two-way minimonitor on top of a passive subwoofer that also acts as the speaker system's stand. In case you're wondering, there are three woofers -- a front-firing 12" driver, and two side-mounted 10" drivers.

All part of a "concept system" were the BD-Design DAC, amp and preamp (left to right, around $3900 each)...,

...while behind them were some impressive looking Kemp Electroniks power products, including QA Plug, SR Plug and SNS Plug plug-in suppressors/filters, and the Powercord Reference power cord (prices not available).

The output of the BD-Designs electronics and Kemp Electroniks products emerged from BD-Design Oris Swing Mk II speakers ($33,000 per pair), which look like a two-way design but actually uses a coincident midrange/tweeter compression driver. As you might guess, sensitivity is very high: a claimed 115dB.

The newest amplifier from Dave Belles is the 500W MB500 monoblock ($15,500 per pair), which is the power champion in the current Belles lineup. Belles is also working on a new hybrid preamp. [www.powermodules.com]

A modern version of the Fisher 50A, the KE 50A mono amps ($7250 per pair) use an interstage transformer to drive the KT88 tubes in full triode mode, producing twice the usual power. The amps were conceived of and designed by Kara Chaffee and manufactured by the company with which she is affiliated: deHavilland. They sounded very sweet driving Wilson Benesch speakers.

The First Watt B1 ($1000) is a unique product, marrying the strengths of passive and active preamps. It's called a "buffer preamp" because it uses a single JFET transistor to buffer a high input impedance to a low output impedance, overcoming an issue with passive preamps, and its simple active circuit provides no gain.