The 7 Most Desirable Music Gadgets

Parrot Zik headphones

Hi-fi traditionalists may well scoff at the idea that French upstart Parrot could team with trendy hotel designer Phillipe Starck and produce a pair of headphones to give most of the established high-end brands a run for their money. But they would be very, very wrong, because these latest wireless Bluetooth-powered Parrot Zik headphones not only look utterly beautiful, they really do offer top notch sound too.

 Focal Spirit One headphones

With numerous style and fashion brands swiftly moving into the increasingly lucrative market of headphones and digital audio peripherals, it is great to see a truly independent high-end hi-fi company such as Focal offer a reasonably affordable pair of nicely-designed cans in the shape of these lovely new Spirit Ones.

While many of those aforementioned fashion-first brands are a little too keen to put style over sound quality,this is certainly not the case with these new Focal headphones, which match cool design and stunning functionality incredibly well indeed.

Propellerhead Balance

Propellerhead makes the coolest-looking home recording studio controller for any aspiring bedroom DJ or home-based producer.

Balance works with both Mac and Windows PCs and gives you eight different input connections to plug in your various instruments, microphones and other music-creation devices to let you mix and create truly amazing tracks

Bayan Audio 7 

A new dude has recently swaggered into the busy iOS party dock scene. Bayan's powerful Audio 7 iPod/iPhone dual-dock has quickly becoming one of the best options for those that favour a stunning marriage of sound quality and raw, earthy power.

Bayan's iOS dock also has a line-in for other tablets, laptops and portable media players, making it one of the best all-rounder mini hi-fi systems available right now.

Monitor Audio iDeck 200

Monitor Audio is one of those well-established British hi-fi firms with a serious pedigree in designing and manufacturing quality speakers. As such, its iDeck 200 has quickly become popular amongst the discerning audiophile crowd.

As well as looking cool, the iDeck 200 genuinely does sound fantastic. Dual 100mm C-CAM bass drivers individually powered by custom-configured 50W amplifiers and 25mm gold dome tweeters, all driven by precision-tailored 20W power amps is why. But you don't really need to remember all of that! You just need to listen to it.

Loewe Air Speaker

Loewe's latest AirPlay-equipped speaker system is a real looker, wirelessly delivering superb sounding tunes all around your house, while looking classically minimalist and cool.

Each speaker actually packs in two powerful subwoofers, two tweeters and two midrange speakers pumping out 80 watts of power - hard to believe until you actually hear it! If you want to hear the music you love, but don't want to invest in huge, traditional-style hi-fi speakers, then Loewe's Air Speaker system is certainly worth a listen in. It's one of the most innovative (and best-looking) Apple AirPlay systems on the market right now.

  Pure Sensia 200D Radio

Pure's latest version of its touchscreen Sensia digital and internet radio is easily one of the best portable and wireless music systems available in early 2012.

An even-better audio performance, an improved touch interface and a new cloud-based music streaming feature helps the Sensia mark 2 really stand out from the dull and dreary DAB crowd.