Ed Selley

Best Headphone Beyerdynamic T1 The T1 impressed us from the outset. Even before it was plugged in, the beautiful build quality and attractive design did wonders for its desirability. This was backed up by a strong and engaging performance that showed remarkable detail-retrieval, resulting in a very transparent and natural-sounding headphone. .

Best One Box System Aura Note Premier The Aura is a demonstration of what makes an awardwinning one-box system. It combines excellent sonics with an attractive and well-thought out design and an extensive feature set that should allow it to fi t into even demanding roles without issue. If you need top performance in one box, look no further than this. .

Best Loudspeaker over £2,000 PMC fact. 8 The fact. 8 is a speaker that does nearly everything right. It is capable of great performance, with superb bass extension, good tonality and sensitivity and some intelligent, well thought out tuning controls.

David Price reports direct from the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show 2012… ARCAM A range of exquisitely finished £250 mini-separates, offering DAC and headphone amp functionality, made its debut. FURUTECH Alongside a vast array of cables and connectors, this little carbon fibre clad headphone amplifier from Alpha Design Labs was shown. PEACHTREE AUDIO This relatively new name debuted its Grand Integrated, a swiftly finished high end amplifier selling for around $3,500. MERIDIAN The company's brand new flagship 818 'Reference Audio Core' source component was launched, costing £7,500.