From entertaining a house full of guests to spending precious moments with your favourite tunes, the newest audio gadgets combine seamless streaming with enhanced sound quality and other groundbreaking features. While some can be neat travel companions, others will add an interesting element to the décor of your home. Either way, these look so gorgeous that their function of producing great sound may sometimes seem secondary.

Here Active Listening

Chosen as one of TIME Magazine’s ‘Best Inventions of 2015’, Here consists of two wireless buds and a smartphone app that allow you to enhance how you listen with volume control, a five-band EQ, preset filters, and layered effects like bass boost, reverb, and flange. Designed to be both comfortable and functional, Here is powered by Doppler Labs’ patented TruE technology, with the visibly simple and compact true-wireless form masking the complexity of the powerful CPU inside. The carrying case for the buds easily fits into your pocket and holds two additional charges.

Price: ₹13,400-20,100

Join the waitlist at: www.hereplus.

Mu-so Qb

Don’t let the miniature size of this wireless speaker fool you. This 22 cm deftly designed cube packs 300 watts of power concealed within a glass-filled polymer casing and bass radiators. Allowing connectivity to Airplay, Bluetooth, Spotify, Internet Radio, USB, analogue and digital inputs, Apple iOS and Android App, among others, this colourful mini-speaker provides complete control. Mu-so Qb is supplied with a standard black speaker grille and can also be purchased in blue, red and orange to complement room colours. It can also become your bedside companion with an alarm clock feature, which can be enabled via the Naim app.

Price: ₹67,000

Available at: www.naimaudio.com

Oppo HA-2

The HA-2 is a stylish portable headphone amplifier with built-in rechargeable battery. It is engineered to enhance music playback from mobile phones and portable music players. Aesthetically designed with a genuine leather casing, contrast stitching and aluminium edges, it isn’t your typical electronic device from the outside. The HA-2 offers digital-to-analogue conversion for a wide range of Android devices, Mac, PC and iPhone/iPod products. It also doubles as a power bank and can be charged in 30 minutes.

Price: ₹25,500

Available at: www.oppodigital.com

Sony PS-HX500

If you hung on to your vinyl collection through the dark ages of cassettes and CDs, now might be a good time to bring them out for enjoyment on a whole new turntable that can be used to record as well playback. Sony’s PS-HX500 breathes new life into analogue masterpieces with its Direct-Stream Digital (DSD) technique. Hook up the turntable to your Mac or PC via a USB and play a record with DSD 5.6 MHz native conversion that converts vinyl recordings into high-resolution audio for the digital age, helping you archive a vinyl collection. You can even connect the turntable to a Walkman, or simply enjoy playing vinyl originals.

Price: ₹40,200

Available at: www.sony.com

Remidi T8

This wearable music instrument is a glove that turns the whole human hand into music by playing combinations of notes and sounds. The wristband hosts the control centre, while the glove hosts eight pressure sensitive spots to trigger notes. They plug to each other through the magnetic connector on the back of the hand. The gesture control personalises movements and decides how to interact with sounds while the audio remix mode play melodies and remixes thousands of tracks with the Remidi app.

Price: ₹23,400

Pre-order at: www.remidipro.com

Manika Dhama is a freelance writer and journalist based in Dubai

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