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I was looking forward to seeing Antelope's recently announced Rubicon Atomic AD/DA Preamp at CES, but so is the company. At the time I visited the room, DHL still hadn't found and delivered it, so we have Director of Sales and Marketing Marcel James standing next to the poster.

The first morning of CES is traditionally when we present the awards for our Products of the Year. 15 minutes before the 2013 Show started, here are the awards, awaiting the 2012 awardees.

After a few years absence from the U.S. market, France's oldest loudspeaker company, Cabasse, has signed a distribution agreement with Esoteric and Teac. In the next few months, many of Teac-Esoteric's 125 US dealers will begin distributing the Cabasse line.

The Best of Innovations 2013 award for High Performance Audio went to the B&O Beoplay A9 digital loudspeaker ($2699), which offers wireless streaming via AirPlay and DLNA. The Beoplay A9 was on static display. It's an interesting-looking product, and I'd like to have a chance to listen to it. Maybe at the B&O press conference that's coming up on Tuesday. . .

QAT Audio Technology is a Chinese company, whose principals have a wide range of interests, from bio-medical engineering to musical performance and composition, and their products aim at the highest level of performance. The QAT MS5 ($5990), which received the Best of Innovations 2013 award is a music server that includes a TEAC CD drive, 2 TB-capacity hard drives, and a tablet-style remote control.

The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 has nothing to do with audio, high-performance or otherwise, so it arguably doesn't belong in a Stereophile show report, but I'm assuming that some readers are gadget-philes as well as audiophiles. The AR.Drone 2.0 is a toy, but not "just" a toy: it has two cameras, so you can shoot aerial helicopter-type shots and view them live on your iPad. Wouldn't you have wanted one of these when you were a kid?

CES Unveiled, scheduled from 4:00–7:00 p.m. on the day before the Press Day, is an event that provides a preview of CES, giving exhibitors a chance to have press coverage before CES proper opens, and, similarly, allows attending members of the press to get an early start on their CES coverage. It's a kind of mini- (or micro-) CES, with products mostly on static display, and, given its size (small booths in a hotel ballroom) it cannot be representative of the giant entity that is CES. Still, for most of the CES press, CES Unveiled is the only game in town during that time, so you might as well attend—and, who knows, maybe you'll see something interesting that's worth checking out further when CES opens. Based on previous experience, I knew there would be a long lineup, so I didn't go until after 5 o'clock. There was no lineup, but inside it was still crowded.