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"Some say it dates back to 1927, when Gramophone magazine's editor thundered that electrical reproduction was a step backward in sound quality," said the promotional copy for Home Entertainment 2005's opening-day event, "The Great Debate: Subjectivism on Trial." It continued: "But whenever it started, the Great Debate between 'subjectivists,' who hear differences among audio components, and 'objectivists,' who tend to ascribe such differences to the listeners' overheated imaginations, rages just as strongly in the 21st century as it did in the 20th." On April 29 at the Manhattan Hilton, Stereophile editor John Atkinson and one of the Internet's most vocal audio skeptics, Arnold B. Krueger, debated mano a mano where the line should be drawn between honest reporting and audio delusion.

As I walked through the corridors of HE2005, I kept hearing audiophiles asking one another, "Have you heard Mark Levinson's demo yet?" Yes, that was Mark Levinson, the man, and the Burwen Bobcat was possibly the most discussed item at the Show.

I've been thinking about women. All weekend long. While that, by itself, is nothing unusual for me, here at Home Entertainment 2005, I''ve been thinking particularly about the small number of female enthusiasts within the hobby of high-end audio.

We get so confused department: Officially, it's day one of the show, even though we've already been here a whole day. But—as we keep having to remind ourselves—it's not all about us. Today was the day the showgoers arrived.

Day one of the Home Entertainment Show is always set aside for the press (and "the industry," which is an apparently elastic term meaning "everybody else"), but this year it seems as though there's more press than ever. Every press conference—and there was a steady stream of them—was standing room only and the halls were already thronged with showgoers. It looks like HE2005 is already a hit.

The Consumer Electronics Association announced last week its finalists for the 2005 "Demmy Awards," a collection of audio demonstration music that the group puts together for retailers and manufacturers. The panel of judges for the awards include Stereophile's own John Atkinson.

On April 14, Krell Industries invited the New York–based audio press to its first-ever American demonstration of its Evolution electronics separates, at Sound By Singer. In a surprise move, the company also debuted a complete "re-imagining" of its flagship loudspeaker, the LAT-1:">http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/382">LAT-1: the $55,000/pair LAT-1000. "We set out to improve the LAT-1," Krell CEO Dan D’Agostino said, "and in the end, probably the only parts we retained from the original design were the top and bottom panels. The LAT-1000 is essentially a completely new design—although it does retain the same footprint as the LAT-1, since that proved so popular in Japan that we didn't want to mess with it." And, he said, patting the aluminum top-plate, "Let me tell you, it was hard to pack all of this new technology into a package this size."