We caught up with Ultimate Ears' Mike Diaz at the Taqueria. "Check this out," he said, plunking a pair of earbuds in front of us with his iPod Mini. We cued up The Carpenters' "Close to You" and inserted the 'phones.

That's what MSB's Larry Gullman called MSB's iLink, $2000 package that makes your iPod "better than CD."

Here is the receiver or a place to put a second iPod.

Here's the part that goes on your iPod to communicate with the base unit.

Music Hall's new $999 Trio CD receiver puts a CD player, tuner, and integrated amp together. What makes it different? Tubes, for one thing—you get 50Wpc of tubey goodness. Just add speakers and cook!

Devore clearly has a monkey fixation.

We always make a point of visiting DeVore Fidelity's rooms because John DeVore <I>always</I> makes music come alive&mdash;and we are <I>so</I> down with that.

Naum Dorkhman was chuffed about Audes' new Excellence series of loudspeakers. "I told he engineers to take a blank sheet of paper and make loudspeakers that would satisfy audiophiles, not the bean counters," he said.

Sugden's US importer analog George Stanwick proudly preens with his A21SE 30wpc Class-A integrated amp and CD21SE CD player. What made the Keith Jarrett trio sound so good&mdash;was it the electronics or was it the Proac Response D28s?

Proac's $6000/pair Response D-28 was making real music connected to Sugden's $3000 CD21SE and $4000 A21SE 30Wpc integrated amplifier. I eyed the 42.5" floorstander, noting its 1" silk dome tweeter and 6.5" midrange/woofer&mdash;but I saw no port.