Wadia was showing its almost ready-to-ship CD/SACD player, the $15,000 781. (A 781<I>i</I> with digital inputs and outputs is also in the works.) The 781 uses two signal processors feeding a programmable gate array and the company's proprietary DigiMaster 2.5 upsampling software. This, Wadia claims, results in a data rate of 1.4112 million samples per second. The 781 also sports Clocklink jitter reduction for both CD and SACD.

I was riding the elevator yesterday, when I spotted Attention Screen's Mark Flynn and Chris Jones. I jumped out of the lift and asked, "What's up?"

What's an audio show without a party? Sponsored by <I>Stereophile</I>, the party on the first day of the show was for the exhibitors, trade visitors, and the press, and featured the Quebec rock group Give, with lead singer Caroline St. Louis.

The first evening of the show, I had a most pleasant dinner with John Atkinson, <I>Stereophile</I> associate publisher Keith Pray, columnist John Marks, and the folks from Dynaudio and Simaudio. During the pre-dinner conversation, John Marks illustrated a point he was making by singing a bit, ably demonstrating his ex-choirboy credentials. His performance was apparently noticed by the people at the next table; at the end of the meal, one of the ladies at that table came over to us and said that this was her friend's birthday, and asked if the gentleman who was singing before could sing "Happy Birthday" to her.

The Galactus-sized Audio Research Reference 610T monoblock amplifiers ($20,000/ea) put out 600W. They require 8 matched pairs of 6550C output tubes, one 6550c regulator, one 6H30 as an amplifier regulator, a pair of 6550Cs as drivers, two 6NIP input tubes, and a 6H30 follower&mdash;that's a <I>ton</I> of tubes.

A bird's eye view of the ARC Reference 610T. The thermal updraft was fierce!