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"Well, there's another new development—sort of," Channel Island Audio's Dusty Vawter said. "We've upgraded our $599 VDP-1 by essentially removing the entire circuit board and replacing it with a better circuit."

"What's new?" We'd just walked into the Channel Islands Audio room and spotted Dusty Vawter.

Eneke (left) and Jaclyn Vandersteen flank Vandersteen's new composite Ebony Quatro ($10,700/pair). The wood Quatros are quite different from the speaker cloth covered $6950/pair Quatro Michael Fremer <A HREF="http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/706vandersteen/">reviewed</A&gt; in <I>Stereophile</I>.

We caught up with Ultimate Ears' Mike Diaz at the Taqueria. "Check this out," he said, plunking a pair of earbuds in front of us with his iPod Mini. We cued up The Carpenters' "Close to You" and inserted the 'phones.

That's what MSB's Larry Gullman called MSB's iLink, $2000 package that makes your iPod "better than CD."

Here's the part that goes on your iPod to communicate with the base unit.

Music Hall's new $999 Trio CD receiver puts a CD player, tuner, and integrated amp together. What makes it different? Tubes, for one thing&mdash;you get 50Wpc of tubey goodness. Just add speakers and cook!