We always make a point of visiting DeVore Fidelity's rooms because John DeVore always makes music come alive—and we are so down with that.

This year, J-DeV was showing off The Nines ($6500/pair), which he described as a 2.5-way DeVore Fidelity Super 8 ($4000/pair) clone "that just kept getting better." The side firing 8" woofer begins to taper off "around 100Hz or so," DeVore explained.

Very smooth—and very deep.

"What's that?" I was pointing to EMT's JPA-66 Varia-Curve Full Function Preamp (price TBD). I was hypnotized by its VU meters, but Tone's Jonathan Helpern had something cooler to show me.

"It takes four different phono inputs, different phono equalization curves, a scratch filter, and a subsonic filter. Are you guys ready for some mono?"

Seconds later, we were listening to a 78rpm 10" single of Frankie Lyman. It sounded great. "Yeah," Halperin said, "and this was a jukebox copy, so it got played to bits. That scratch filter really works!"

Naum Dorkhman was chuffed about Audes' new Excellence series of loudspeakers. "I told he engineers to take a blank sheet of paper and make loudspeakers that would satisfy audiophiles, not the bean counters," he said.

The flagship Excellence 5 ($5995/pair) has an extremely rigid front baffle, SEAS drivers (1" silk dome, two 5" midrange, and two 8" woofers) are from SEAS, the capacitors are from Munden, and the speaker terminals are from Cardas.

The proof ain't in the ingredients, however, it's in the listening. On that level, the Excellence 5s are at least 90 proof. Jon Iverson and I were impressed.

Sugden's US importer analog George Stanwick proudly preens with his A21SE 30wpc Class-A integrated amp and CD21SE CD player. What made the Keith Jarrett trio sound so good—was it the electronics or was it the Proac Response D28s?

"We think it's the combination of great loudspeakers and well-built electronics," he answered diplomatically.

"And maybe the new Proac speaker cables," Proac's Richard Gerberg added.

"And that, of course," Stanwick said diplomatically.

Proac's $6000/pair Response D-28 was making real music connected to Sugden's $3000 CD21SE and $4000 A21SE 30Wpc integrated amplifier. I eyed the 42.5" floorstander, noting its 1" silk dome tweeter and 6.5" midrange/woofer—but I saw no port.

Had Proac gone to a sealed-box enclosure? Then my eagle eyes bespied a slight elevation of the cabinet off the plinth. I reached down to check—and yes! There was a downfiring port.

Of course, Jon Iverson caught me in the almost proctological examination position.

If $250 per tube seems too dear, you can supply your own 12AX7, ECC 83, E83CC, 7025, 5751, 7058, 7729, 6681, CV492, CV8156, or 6057—and add Cool Valve's Eat Cool dampers for $40 each, as seen on the right..

Roy Hall was blunt as usual. "I'm bringing in some obscenely expensive tubes. They're Telefunken ECC803Ses, which is one of the best tubes available, but Cool Valve measures them and selects the most perfectly matched, and then bonds their EAT Cool Damper to them. The result is lower operational temperatures, longer life, and lower microphonics. They cost . . . "

My hearing must have stopped at that point—or else I couldn't make any sense of what Roy had said. "Say again?"

"They cost $250 each." Pause. "You know me, I'm cheap. I'd never even consider them, except they work!"

Hansen Audio needed a speaker that wasn't quite as, um, lordly as its $65,000/pair King floorstanders, so Lars Hansen designed the $49,000/pair Emperors. The four driver three-ways are constructed of Hansen's composite matrix material in an enclosure that employs Sound Wave Refraction Distortion Elimination technology. The midrange (7.2") and bass (10.6") drivers are all multilayer composite sandwiches.

Driven by an Audio Aero SACD player and the Convergent Audio Technology's SL1 Ultimate Mk. II preamp and JL2 Signature power amps, the Emperors sounded quite regal. We suspect they need a lot more breathing space than a hotel room provides, so we can't say much more than that for now.

What's in a name? "It's a palindrome, sort of an anagram, and an ambigram," said Rob Darling. It's pronounced, "su loose," by the way.

"We all ripped our CDs to computer 8 years ago," Rob said. "That was easy—everything else about the experience was a nightmare. Who relates to lists? We decided we needed a graphic, touchscreen controlled interface that worked seamlessly with no user effort. That's what Sooloos is all about."

"Oh yes, we couldn't stand compression, so it had to work with FLAC—and if we weren't using compression, then sound quality mattered, so no fans and no moving discs within the audio portion of the system. We use flash there and house the noisy stuff elsewhere."

System price: $13,000.

The storage drives are available in 1TB and 2TB models called the Store:One and Store:Two (D'oh!). Other system attributes: super low-jitter design, DC coupled signal path, ground-free transformer-coupled digital output, 192kHz/24-bit converters, and servo-balanced analog outputs.

And yes, we were very excited to talk to folks who seem to "get" high-end music servers. We think that idea is going to change everything.

Sooloos is a company to watch, and here's the crew assembled in one room: Angus MacDonald, Enno Vandermeer, Rob Darling & Sandro Pugliese. These guys cringed if we even discussed anything less than full-resolution CD on their system.

The Sooloos display comes with a built-in CD slot for loading your music onto the server. The $4400 Control:One touch-screen display/controller is pretty slick. The CD ripper is in the base—unobtrusively located, might we add? Once the disc is ripped, all of All Media Guide's metadata is automatically entered, so you could, for example, locate any recording in your collection with Phil Lesh playing bass. Oh wait—maybe we should have used an example with somebody who changed bands more frequently.

As we were walking out of DLS' room, we passed Supro Cables' display. "Are those Deltron connectors?" I asked.

"No, they're CombiComs ($40/pair). Terminate the wire to the end-piece and you can then screw in a pressure sleeve or spade lug." Good contact, good copper, good idea.

DEQX's PDC3 preamp/processor (price tdb) combines an analog preamplifier with a DAC and measurement-driven DSP. In a hotel room with zero treatment, Jon Iverson and I were enthralled by the three dimensional soundstaging of a pair of B&W 805s and a pair of B&W ASW 700s. Nope, it wasn't because the CD player was fabulous, either—it was solid, but not audiophile approved.

"Come back later," Sasha Case said. "We're going to demonstrate our new active, adjustable crossover and that's a difference that isn't even debatably subtle. It's amazing."

You have to start somewhere, so Jon Iverson and I started with DLS from Sweden. "Are you guys new?" JI asked.

"No. We've been in the automotive audio business for 10 years. This is our first home audio system,"said David Koniarski, DLS' marketing manager. He pointed to the CD One ($3500) and Amplifier One ($3500), a 100Wpc integrated with a single-ended mosfet output stage.

"I design the loudspeakers," said Mats Andersen, caressing his M66 floorstanding 2.5-way tower ($3000/pair). DLS manufactures its own drivers—in the case of the M66, they are a 28mm fabric dome tweeter and two 6" aluminum midrange/woofers with polypropylene surrounds. "The polyprolene damps the aluminum's tendency to ring," said Andersen.

The system sounded dynamic and balanced, so we reckoned that we were off to a good start.

This is the first year that the high-end audio exhibits are clustered in the Venetian Hotel and Casino. Emphasis on the casino part - to get to the majority of hotel room exhibits, we must negotiate about a quarter mile of hallway and casino to get from the shuttle stop to the elevators. The rooms themselves are nicely appointed, but several exhibitors are already complaining about the acoustics and the challenge of finding ways to make the two level suites music friendly. And on a personal note, the press room is back the quarter mile through the casino near the shuttle stop. End of gripe.

Stephen Mejias and longtime Primedia CES assistant Cynthia get the awards ready to be handed out later in the day. We'll have complete pictures and story later.

The breakfast SM is referring to below.

It was Joanna Newsom singing and harping about, you know, elves and butterflies, and fairies, making me want to grow my hair long and go search for unicorns. It was beautiful and out-of-place as only the most beautiful things can be.

More details on this room to come. For now: Breakfast!

As we reported last March, the Consumer Electronics Association decided to move the "high-performance audio" and "high-performance home theater" exhibits of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to Las Vegas' Venetian Hotel in 2007. Here, then, in a blatant attempt to scoop my show-reporting Stereophile colleagues, is my picture of the new CES venue. I actually took this picture last year, not in anticipation of the change in show venue, but simply because I’m a sucker for the ersatz-European ambience of Las Vegas hotel-casinos like the Venetian. And whatever the advantages/disadvantages of the Venetian for demonstrating audio equipment, you have to admit that it’s picturesque!