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I got to the LVCC just in time. The journalist registration line in the second floor pressroom was virtually non-existent . . . until I finished. By then, 20 more journalists had lined up behind me.

<i>Push, push, one more, one more, push…Almost there! I can see its head!</i>

For the past several days, I’ve had Neil Young’s newly remastered solo debut playing on repeat. <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/musicroom/robertbaird/">Robert</a&gt; received a copy of the <a href="http://www.neilyoungarchives.com/">Neil Young Archives</a> Official Release Series HDCD and I swiped it from him. (Actually, I was like, “May I please listen to that awesome stuff, please?”) Young’s first four albums, <i>Neil Young</i>, <i>Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere</i>, <i>After The Goldrush</i>, and <i>Harvest</i>, make up the first offering from the NYA ORS:

I love wandering the halls and coming across a fully formed company that had up until now snuck under the radar in the US. Bladelius is such a brand, enjoying success all around the world and presently making a push into North America. President George Ioakimedes, who resides in the US, is at the show to sign up dealers and spread the word about the Swedish company.

Now that Meridian Sooloos has stabilized the hardware offerings in their front-to-back media server system, the new 2.1 software upgrades are getting most of the attention at this year's show.

Here's Ayre's Steve Silberman holding the new DX-5 universal player that can handle not only SACD, CD and DVD-Audio, but also DVD and Blu-ray discs. Think of it as an Oppo BDP-83 on super steroids. In fact the company starts with an Oppo drive and MPEG processor and throws everything else out, adding in a new power supply and all the important digital bits. Wrapped up in a beautifully machined package and retailing somewhere around $10,000, pre-orders begin next week, and deliveries should happen sometime in the first half of February.

Ed Meitner's EMM Labs also has a new SACD/CD player/reference DAC called the XDS1. Available now for $25,000, the company's Shahin Al Rashid says that if you want the lastest and greatest from Ed, this is the piece to buy. In addition to the XLR and RCA stereo outputs on the back, there are both AES/EBU and Toslink input jacks to accomodate external sources.