Yoshi Hontani sent me word that the wonderful little Leben CS300XS vacuum tube integrated amplifier was a winner of Gold Medal for 2010 from the French magazine Diapason. Here's a little excerpt from the review:

"Faithful to the look and spirit of the end of the 1960’S, this small integrated tube amplifier is full of charm with its large controls and its ‘bass boost’ (which allows us to increase the low frequency level 3 or 5 dB, for low level listening) .

Entirely designed in Japan by Taku HYODO, with the circuits are point to point soldered, with incomparable quality. This puts us in the domain of the unmeasurable, or more precisely, where the human ear takes over with its sensibility.

Power is left to 4 EL84 tubes and 2 signal tubes, 5751. We are offered 5 line inputs and loudspeaker outputs of 4, 6 and 8 ohm (changeable, to suit your loudspeaker).

We find here, the magic of the best tube amplifiers, particularly the richness and transparency and the superb ability to portray instruments and voices. The recording of the New Year’s concert, directed by George Prêtre in Vienna has a remarkable savour of the woodwind instruments, these obviously benefit from the amplifiers tonal qualities, but also the expressiveness and extraordinary fluidity of the music. Curiously, the B and W 804N loudspeakers are relatively well controlled.  The most remarkable is the way in which this little amplifier retains the emotional dimension of the interpretations. An excellent performance in this price range."

As long time readers know, I bought a Leben CS300X Special Edition of my own based on Paul Candy's review at 6Moons. My Leben CS300X Special Edition is one of my favorite audio devices, and is the basis of my Review System 3. The SE differs from the XS version only in tube choice (the Special Edition has been discontinued due to lack of availability of its NOS vacuum tubes). Highly recommended by yours truly, as well as winning the prestigous Diapson Gold Medal for 2010.