Ah, China. The American audio industry has been facing stiff competition from a seemingly never-ending supply of Chinese high-end import products. While American audiophiles and normal consumers are weary of Chinese brand names, a number of companies have taken to rebranding the best of China and offering them up to American consumers as "the next hot thing."

Witness the V.A.L. i5 Vacuum tube speaker system. A little 6V6 tube sits in the place of honor (the input stage) and sends a signal to a series of low-power digital amps that feed the little full range speakers and a subwoofer. So what's the deal? Click "read full article" to see all the variations using this exact design. The companies offering these new products are SonicGear with their iSteroid, Quest for Sound's iPod Partner and Gini's iTube. Notice the subtle differences? Different colors, different features, different prices (from $100 up to $350 or so).

The irony is that this thing sounds great. No, really. I had a chance to play around with one of these and it really does sound startling good, despite the price tag of a few hundred bucks. How so? My only guess can be the plastic single driver covering from 110Hz on up. If you're familiar with the famed Jordan full range mini drivers, these plastic cones from China work the same way -- spread them way apart, toe them way in, crank them way up and get hit with that single driver Jordan sound (otherwise, it sounds terrible). Paired with the little digital amp and the tube buffer stage, this little thing is good, scary good...

The other player in the clones wars is Dared. I have also had a chance to play around with the little Dared MP-5 and it's also a killer piece. Again, tubes in the input stage and tiny digital amps (like Tripath, supposedly) providing the juice. Really nice build quality and all the shiny chrome you can handle. Put this next to any Bose POS and the Dared will sell hands down, every time, for less money. The Dared amp should have taken off. But what happened?

Dared's own American importer botched the launch. Their website ranked among the worst in audio. So for people looking to jump from Bose to tubes, they were met with a marketing tragedy. And that's when the Dared parent company began selling MP-5s sans labels. Fatman, a brit company, slapped their own label on the Dared piece, calling it the iTube (sound familiar?). Sound By Singer out of New York City is calling his identical version the Sonic Integrity. And now there's Vuum. Again, nothing new, just a different label. Oh, and eyeTEK in Germany. Is a Kazakhstani version forthcoming? One can only hope.

So four companies all competing with the same products in the same market. Singer has the highest price at $1000 for the set (audiophile gouging?) with the others coming it at around $700. Then again, I wrote about an auction selling the Dared amps for just $179. Ouch.

The sad part is main stream sites like Gizmodo and iLounge are writing about these products and absolutely slaughtering them. Or, I should say, they post the raw news and the readers go "hey, I've seen that before! It's a knock off! Boo!" And that's when the pitchforks come out and the American market rejects the products outright.

Alas, both these products are damn good (with the usual price/setup caveats). The vacuum tube does, through its little distortion magic act, clean up some of the digital glare of MP3s, so it's not all marketing BS about tubes at this price level. It's a shame, really, that what could have been legitimate convergence products have instead become Chinese alphabet soup.

I do hold out hope, however, that this new generation of trickle-down high-end products draw more and more attention to hi-fi. Seems people are becoming interested, finally, even if it's still in the freaky products out there. Here's to hoping that someone releases a product with genuine high-end appeal with marketing to match.

Oh, and finally, there's the iClassic below. See those tubes? Can you guess what they are? KT88s? 300Bs (Western Electrics, maybe)? Nope, they're faux tubes but they glow like the real thing! Yup, the iClassic is basically a iPod dock/clock radio with fake tubes and real speakers. $180 to lose your audio soul.

Me, I'm hoping for stick-on tubes from China. You know, a little battery inside with adhesive on the bottom. Then everything can be tube powered! DVD player, plasma TV, four-slice toaster, toilet, dog, wife. It's a brave new world.