High Gear

It’s impossible to argue with the convenience of a smartphone. The ability to sample a huge library of songs, remotely control the temperature of your pied-à-terre, or summon a town car with the swipe of a finger has transformed the world of traditional technology. Some things, though, can’t be replaced by a touch screen and an app. Below, a selection of gear that goes beyond functionality to thrill, through stellar performance, distinctive design, and old-school analog excellence. Marrying hallowed traditions with inspired innovation, these seven pieces are a welcome reminder of the power of tactile beauty in an increasingly digital world. After all, a perfectly designed home deserves gadgetry to match.

Some products have revolutionary impact, transforming an industry as soon as they hit the market. Others evolve over time, slowly cementing their dominance via a series of quiet, incremental improvements.

The Sondek LP12 is one of those rare beasts to have done both. Upon its release in 1973, it torpedoed the consensus among hi-fi connoisseurs that loudspeakers were the key element in any stereo rig. Using a suspended chassis system to re-engineer the interface between stylus and vinyl, it wrung so much more sonic information from the groove of a record, music lovers found themselves working their way back through their collections, tuning into details and dynamics they’d never heard before.

Not content with this paradigm shift, however, the engineers at Linn have subjected their creation to a continuous process of improvement ever since, making upgrades or adjustments every year, as well as rolling out several ancillary pieces—power sources, tone arms, etc.—most christened according to the quirky house style that prefers the model names include the letter “k.”

About halfway through Traffic, Steven Soderbergh’s sprawling, epic masterwork tracing the international tentacles of the narcotics business, there is a harrowing scene in which professional assassin Francisco Flores, aka Frankie Flowers, is tortured by members of a rival cartel. As a tactic to get Frankie to break, an interrogator turns good cop, encouraging him to reminisce about his high-flying lifestyle. Giddy with relief, Flowers lists some of the lovely things that had furnished his home, beginning with…a pair of B&W loudspeakers.

There are three compelling reasons to invest in what many consider the highest-performing headphones on the planet.

First, their technical prowess is unparalleled: The LCD-4’s Double Fluxor Magnet Arrays generate 1.5 Tesla, the most powerful magnetic flux density found in a product of this kind.

Second, they exude luxury. The enclosures are handcrafted from Macassar ebony, and the leather-and-carbon fiber headband makes them feel remarkably lightweight and comfortable to wear.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What piece of stereo equipment would let me channel the young Jean-Paul Belmondo,” here’s your answer.

As any self-respecting cinéaste knows, the movies that shot the likes of Belmondo to fame in the late 1950s and early 1960s were made possible by new technology. Maverick directors like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut had a vision of how they wanted to shake things up; but it wasn’t until the arrival of lightweight, portable equipment that they could put their ideas into action and take to the streets, capturing the youthful energy that was transforming Paris.

One of the key pieces of gear driving this revolution was a sound recorder produced by Swiss company Nagra—a gorgeously designed machine, complete with what may be the coolest-looking knobs and dials of all time. In 1997, the company began producing ultra-high-end audio components, channeling their mastery of professional recording into some of the world’s most desirable consumer electronics. Named for the Montreux Jazz Festival, with which Nagra partnered for many years, the Jazz preamplifier is, to quote a review in French audio bible Haute Fidélité, a “magnifique électronique à consommer sans moderation” (a “magnificent piece of electronics to consume without moderation”).

Elegant? No. Easy to use? No way. High-maintenance? Unapologetically. Worth it? A thousand times, si.

The Olympia Cremina is made in a small, family-owned factory in the Swiss canton of Glarus that looks out over a landscape more suggestive of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music than Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita. But while the Italians may be the best in the world at stylishly sipping an espresso, it’s their northerly neighbor who makes the durable, precisely engineered, lever-operated machine for producing said heady, crema-topped brew.