Eleven year old French audio manufacturer Neodio was at CES for the fourth year showing their complete line of audio products including the NR 22 CD Player ($15k), Transport ($13k) and DAC ($12k). Shown here are Michel Rousseau on the left and Jean-Francois Fronton on the right with the DAC and Transport in silver on the shelf. All three units feature a special non-resonant three-layer chassis and the company is looking for US distribution.

A music server priced in the low six figures. An air tight music server filled with inert gasses. A music server so rare, only two have been built to date.

I try to be logical about show coverage so usually start at the top floor and work my way down, room by room, floor by floor.

CES exhibits at the Venetian top out at floor 35, and as soon as I exited the stairwell, I spied the first exhibitor, Magico speakers. I'm here to cover digital and tend to skip the speaker-only rooms, but Magico provides great demos, so I stepped in.

Am I glad I did.

One of the newcomers to the Venetian this year is a Japanese company called Qualia (not to be confused with the short-lived Sony venture). I remember seeing their gorgeous-looking products at T.H.E Show last year, and new this year is the equally stunning Indigo USB-DAC at $45,000.

The Indigo USB-DAC sports four 32-bit Hyperstream DACs and all discrete output and headphone amplifier sections. Connections on the back include both balanced and unbalanced outputs, as well as USB, coax, XLR and TOSLINK inputs. The unibody cases are machined from high-purity aluminum and the product is available now, distributed in the US by Immedia.

For several years now, the CES's High-Performance Audio exhibits have been housed at the tony Venetian Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. And also for several years, the room shared by Stereophile and Home Theater magazines, now joined by our sister websites AudioStream.com and InnerFidelity.com, has been hosted by our administrative assistant (which means she is the glue that holds us together and tells me she prefers to be called our "Digital Goddess") Rosemarie Torcivia. Welcome to Las Vegas, Ro'.

The first morning of CES is traditionally when Stereophile presents its awards for the best products of the previous year, voted on by the magazine's editors and writers. Here, in the magazine's suite at the Venetian Hotel, awaiting their recipients are the 2011 Awards. My thanks to Ariel Bitran for doing a great job getting the awards to CES in time for the presentations.

After encountering booths of so many manufacturers I had never heard of, I got some comfort from seeing a familiar name from the world of audio: Velodyne. Well known for their subwoofers, Velodyne has entered the highly competitive earphone market. Their new $90 Vpulse's claim to fame is—you guessed it—exceptionally powerful bass performance. Velodyne's David Short was most enthusiastic about it, and told me that although Velodyne is not about to go out of the subwoofer business, they're working on a wide range of headphones.

Everybody wants to get into the act. Pro Audio manufacturer Behringer had several iPod/iPhone audio accessories, including the nifty Soundscape Air ($129), which features wireless speakers (good for up to 8 hours of playing, up to 150 feet from the base unit) that utilize inductive (ie, wireless) charging.

With the speakers removed, you can see the inductive bases on the dock.

The Best of Innovations winner in the Headphones category was the Sonomax eers ™ earphones, described as "the world's only custom-fitted earphones that can be fitted in 4 minutes, [offering] incomparable sound isolation, fidelity and comfort."