Audio Lineaire [their website shows this as being 2 words] is a French manufacturer of colorful speakers.

Some Audio Lineaire ‘Harmonie’ speakers

Some Audio Lineaire ‘Harmonie’ speakers

Some Audio Lineaire ‘Harmonie’ speakers

A number of frontspieces of different colors for the Audio Lineaire speakers

The Viola Forte amplifier. Viola had a much more significant presence here at CES this year.

The Audio Aero La Source CD/SACD player

Audio Aero’s LaSource CD/SACD player

The Viola ‘Solo’ preamplifier

Our good friend Steve G., who usually has good ears, insists that the new Revel Salon speakers are pretty good – but I have yet to hear a system with these speakers that captures my interest. I liked the old Salons fine, and I am one of those who prefers the older look as well [I know I am not alone! This is one of those tube versus solid-state kind of wars among us Revel followers :-)]

Now these amps… I think these new Jones Audio PA M300 amps are some of the best looking solid-state amps ever. I hope to hear them in several different systems at the shows later in the year.

Revel Salon 2 speaker

Revel Salon 2 speaker

Jones Audio PA M300 monoblock amplifier

Jones Audio PA M300 monoblock amplifier. Love the way the ventilation holes are set in a random, yet organic, pattern.

Jones Audio PRE S-1 Stereo Preamplifier.

Jones Audio PRE S-1 Stereo Preamplifier.

This is one of several rooms using the OPPO CD/.DVD player as a source this year.

This room had a pair of YG Acoustics Anat III Studio speakers driven by an Esoteric A-03 amplifier, almost everything sitting on Synergistic Research Tranquility Base XL platforms and, of course, cables with Synergistic cable.

Synergistic Research has been trying to capture part of the weird-tweak craze with their Acoustic Art tweaks. There were a couple of these on the floor.

The YG Acoustics Anat III Studio speaker

YG Acoustics Anat III Studio speaker

The Esoteric A-03 Stereo Amplifier.on a Synergistic Research Tranquility Base XL platform

The Esoteric A-03 Stereo Amplifier.

Note the Synergistic Research Tranquility Base XL platforms on the Grand Prix equipment rack.

This cool-blue-tube thing is the power supply for Synergistic Research’s Active Shielding cables.

Here is a good shot of the cabling on the Esoteric amp and the back of the YG Acoustic speaker.

A close-up of the Synergistic Research Galileo cable box.

Now this is a weird, and potentially very cool, thing. The description is below.

So what it does is convert USB to RCA and BNC. So essentially it enables the use of old style and/or high-quality DACs with our computer or other network-aware sources.

Ah, the old power cord on the wall trick… 🙂