That concludes the audio portion of my tour. I'm packed, and after toodling around Shanghai a little, I peddle off to Beijing for some culture, and then home.

Thanks for joining me on the tour—it has been nice writing home to all of you in the audiosphere.

This is the µ3i with its top off. MC, MM, and lots of flexibility.

"How much does it cost in the US?"

"Oh, we don't sell it in the US. There's no market for analog there."

Wow, what are those?

"That's our µ3i phono section," said Zou.

Only, it wasn't. I walked around to the back and discovered it was the outboard DC power supply for the µ3i.

First you build, then you measure.

Modules awaiting attachment to the chassis. "It looks like kits."

"My first integrated was a kit—I built it in middle school."

"Did you build it because you were into music or because you were into electronics?"

"Pretty much the same as now," Zou said. "First I built, then I listened, then I adjusted, then I listened some more."

"And so on?"

"And so on."

Heatsinks waiting to be attached to their output devices—or is it the other way around?

The inside view of a Dussun X-500 power conditioner.

The D9 is Dussun's multichannel integrated amplifier. Actually, the only amps Dussun makes are integrateds.

The D9 is a huge beast. Wonder if Zou knows it's the name of a heavy metal piece of earth moving equipment? Bet he does.

"We only do final assembly," Zou said. "I can't afford a larger staff, given Shanghai salaries, so we purchase the component parts from all over—the resistors are European, the circuit boards are the best, and we buy chassis parts from David Zheng at EKTG."

Here an employee is hand-matching individual FETs.

This is Zou Yuan Yuan, managing director of Dussun Electronics Co. Ltd. That's pronounced da-sun, as in "Da sun, boss, da sun!"

He's standing in front of an array of test equipment that stands behind his office desk. It would make John Atkinson green with envy.

Why does the company's managing director have test equipment in his office? "When I left school [as an EE], I went to work for Red Lantern [a large Chinese electronics manufacturer, founded in 1960], designing test equipment. After a year or so, I joined the amplification design team."

Designing test equipment influences Zou Yuan Yuan's amplifier design philosophy. "Things must sound good—but we start with good measurements and proceed from there."

When Red Lantern folded in 1998, Zou started Korsun, taking with him a hand-picked team of Red Lantern veterans. Most of his 12 employees were part of that crew.

Korsun became Dussun in 2005, when Zou bought the company from his investors.

"Does the word Dussun mean anything?"

"No, I took a dictionary and looked for words that had no meaning."

XLH's SL-INS preamplifier ($5000). No, I didn't get a chance to hear them—Mr. Hou is still building his second AEF-1812, having sold his previous sets.

XLH's M-2000 monoblock power amplifier $25,000/pair).

Mr. Hou's tasty vintage Fender Jazz bass.

Mr. Hou's Marshall and Strat.

Mr. Hou's loft is stuffed with fun goodies, such as a drum set, keyboard rack—even a disco ball.

He hits a tom-tom and says, "When you hear a speaker reproduce this, you're really getting somewhere."

Since high-end audio isn't how Mr. Hou makes his living, he has his real factory elsewhere in the building. This is just his audio playground.

Just the speaker.

This is Hou Ying Zhong, of XLH.

His real job is creating theatrical and cinema sound systems, but high-end audio is his passion.

He's standing in front of his $50,000/pair AEF-1812 loudspeakers. That's "18," as in 18" woofer, and "12," as in "1+2=3, which is an auspicious number.

I spotted this box of money by the door. "What's that?" I asked, "The tea fund?"

"No," Linda Ling said. "It's the naughty fund. When someone breaks a rule like coming to work late, they have to pay in some small cash. When the box is full, we take everybody out for a celebration."

This is not the fastest way to heatshrink trannie leads, but this guy obviously takes his job seriously.