It's been a very exciting year for me at 6moons as I've enjoyed some excellent sounding gear. In terms of the high-end, most of the gear I've been enjoying has been fairly modest in price. However, some of those prices are guaranteed to shock the bejeesus out of most of the straights out there. So for the purpose of the year-end round up, I'd like to spotlight a few ultra-affordable products that even the aforementioned straights wouldn't think twice about.


At $299 a pair, the Magnepan MMG W wall-hanging planar magnetic loudspeakers have something for everybody. Spouses love their unobtrusive nature that leaves free valuable floor space. Music lovers almost won't believe the open liquid midrange and that huge and spacious soundstage. Home Theater lovers will love the seamless coherence obtained by having the same over-achieving speaker all around the room - even a pair performing center channel duties. In many respects, these speakers offer unsurpassed value but if one day you find yourself lusting for bigger and better Magnepans, don't blame me - that's all part of their plan!
Moving up the price-of-entry scale, I come to the Ohm Walsh Micro loudspeaker. True, at $1000 decked out in real rosewood, they're more expensive but the added expenditure gets you a healthy dose of bass that ensures that you won't require a subwoofer for satisfying bass in medium to small rooms. They don't hang on the wall but are so small and unobtrusive that they offer complete flexibility of placement and unlike most of their like-priced competition, don't require stands. The Micro offers a beautiful midrange and a treble that outshines most of the competition but in the end, the speaker is better than the sum of its own parts due to its omni-directional radiation pattern that ensures excellent soundstaging for a wide array of listeners. All in all, it's not only easy to listen to, it's exceedingly easy to live with.
My last selection is priced less than the first two but in use, they will exceed both of the first two combined. Expensive? No, not within the context of the high-resolution systems in which they will be most effective. How they work and why they are of such value may be a little more difficult to comprehend but I find them to be one of the more universally recommendable of products out there though I'd highly advise experimentation in their implementation. I speak of ZCable's Z-Sleeves.
They come in multiple configurations and prices and they are meant for use with power cords, speaker wires and interconnects as they shield them all from the deleterious effects of RFI and EMI. Power conditioners can be great but occasionally there are situations where they may not be recommended, particularly on high powered amplifiers. The Z-Sleeves can be used anywhere. As I said in my review, "if increased system focus, a smoother and more refined midrange, greater treble purity, a lowered noise floor and an added dose of micro-dynamic finesse speak to you, the Z-Sleeves from ZCable are a great place to start."


There you have it - three easy recommendations that, by audiophile standards, are very affordable to leave some money in your wallet for the music that makes all of this worthwhile.