LATEST ADDITIONS

The CES's "Innovations" exhibit at the Sands Convention Center is intended to honor the most technologically advanced and ground-breaking consumer electronic products at the Show. Most of the display cases were still waiting to be populated on set-up day (though we spotted B&W's cute cylindrical subwoofer as well as Krell's Dean Roumanis wheeling in some big boxes). But some of the choices for an award raised our eyebrows, as with this robot intended to train boxers in the comfort of their own homes. <I>Stereophile</I>'s Stephen Mejias strikes a suitably pugilistic pose.

You know that stuff I said about how pointless the pre-show press conferences are? Well, not always&mdash;not, for example, when Jim Thiel has been busy. At last year's CES, Thiel practically levitated when he began describing the challenges of re-designing his CS3.6 floorstander, which has been in production since 1992. He described what he'd keep in the CS3.7 (first-order crossover; three-way design; short-coil/long gap motor design; coincident tweeter and midrange, time coherence;and aluminum diaphragms) and then he began waxing rhapsodic about how completely open that left his imagination.

If one component is omnipresent this year, it's the iPod. You may find this hard to believe, but there are actually companies making iPod accessories these days&mdash;actually, it's hard to find companies that aren't.