I was excited to see Cambridge Audio's TT50 turntable. On display with their small, S30 loudspeakers ($259/pair), the TT50 was looking pretty darn sexy in its high-gloss jet-black finish. If it reminds you of Pro-Ject's popular Debut III, that's probably because the TT50 was developed in partnership with that Austrian firm. It uses a proprietary tonearm, an Audio Technica AT95E moving magnet cartridge, and its elastomer-coated acrylic platter is said to "control resonance and provide matched acoustic impedance to the vinyl record for maximum detail retrieval."

See this man?

And here is Adam Shaw-Cotterill licking the Mezzo 1's Aspirated Tweeter. I'm not sure why he's licking it. He must really love it.

Apparently, you can also smoke Mordaunt-Short's Aspirated Tweeter. It is said to produce glorious highs.

Back home, at the end of a long day, John Atkinson will often come into my office and wish me a good evening. It's very sweet.

The Jadis magic is hard to explain. But once you hear it, you can recognize it again and again. It has to do with the beauty of the midrange, the accuracy of timbres, and an inherent musicality that is less about detail than essence.

One of the highlights of RMAF 2007 was encountering Lou Hinkley's Daedalus Audio Ulysses loudspeakers ($8800/pair) in the ART Audio room. Here, paired with Gill Audio Designs Alana preamp ($5000) and Elise DAC ($6000), an Ensemble transport, Clayton M-200 power amps ($9500/pair), and relatively inexpensive Empirical Design cabling, the system was arresting in its transparency and three-dimensionality.

It's hardly the same as clicking your heels three times and finding yourself back in Kansas, but <I>Stereophile</I>'s metaphoric Good Witch of the High End, John Atkinson, has granted me my big wish for CES. Instead of finding myself wandering around and around in circles, following my ears, I’ve been assigned specific turf: T.H.E. Show. And since T.H.E. Show’s two venues, the St. Tropez and adjacent Alexis Park, are literally across the street from our bloggers' home for four nights, the newly and quite tastefully refurbished, remarkably low-key Hyatt Place Las Vegas (formerly the AmeriSuites), yours truly could not be happier. The Sands/Venetian may have more&ndash;well-known, higher-profile players, and is certainly attracting more visitors, but I've entered a number of wonderful-sounding rooms on my first day at the St. Tropez to make me quite happy to be here.

Why off to CES2008, of course. Check out <I>Stereophile</I>'s coverage at our <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/">Show blog</A>.

We'd been told to check out Boulder's new music server, but that's not exactly what the $24,000 1021 Disc Player is. It's a CD player (with a few other formats "to be announced") that uses a computer disc drive to feed a one-minute buffer to "preserve the integrity of the audio signal delivered from the drive. "Also," confided Steve Rockwell, "the clock is about <I>this</I> far [<I>pinches fingers together</I>], so jitter is phenomenally low."