I am very active in a Chinese radio discussion board, I am lucky
enough to be one of the only few people who got a chance to review the
engineering model of VAL R-301 radio. The biggest surprise to me is
the sound, it has a very warm and tube-like sound only heard from
vintage European radios, the bass is
relaxed yet powerful, better than the tight bass available from
Tivoli.

For features, it has FM/AM band, FM stereo available from a satellite
speaker, and a real mechanical timer!

Yes, I know it doesn't have Short Wave but if you do not listen to SW
and want a good sound, R-301 is not a bad choice.

I have created a group on Yahoo and put a few pictures there, if you
are interested, you can have a look at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Valradios/