We were stunned to see Roger Skoff in the Ultralink/XLO room—we thought he'd retired years ago. "I did," he explained, "but I was asked to design some new stuff incorporating new technologies and more advanced versions of our existing designs."

It exists; we saw it for ourselves! Wadia's $349 iTransport can take the digital signal out of an iPod <I>before</I> the DAC, outputting 16-bit/44.1khz resolution for uncompressed files&mdash;it doesn't upconvert lower-rez files like MP3s, but it <I>does</I> reformat them to 16/44.1, according to Wadia's John Schaffer.

The back of the iTransport fully decked out with XLO cabling.

The new Wadia iTransport detailed above also comes in your choice of hot rod finishes. Well not officially, but they couldn't resist making one for the show.

We ran into SinglePower Inc.'s Mikhail Rotenberg as he was sprinting down the hall to the Synergistic Research room. "Check these out," he said. "These are a 1932 Tung Argon 4327 and a 1943 722A (323), labeled Centennial, but manufactured by Western Electric."

The show has just opened its doors and <I>Stereophile</I>'s Stephen Mejias holds the new Product of the Year awards to be handed out all day long.