The PS Audio Memory Link ($1695) is a CD/DVD/RAM drive. It's a mechanical player (<I>ie</I>, it still spins the discs), but it has an unusually large cache. Conventional players have caches of around 8&ndash;16MB, the Memory Link has a 64MB cache. Why is this better?

The digital outputs include HDMI for audio only output.

Wes Phillips, Stephen Mejias, and Kal Rubinson join San Antonio, Texas retailer Galen Carol on the way to the Venetian. As Galen explained to us, high end retailing is a bit of a challenge, but still viable to dealers that take care of their customers and offer old fashioned service.

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.