Heck, it hit us first.

I often joke that when I expire and migrate to the lower rings of hell, I'll find nothing else in my eternity than white blues bands playing "Mustang Sally" over and over and over again. But now I may have found another possibility for the soundtrack to my infernal reward.

Former <I>Stereophile</I> scribe (now PR person) Jonathan Scull (left), blogger Stephen Mejias (center), and surround-sound maven Kal Rubinson&mdash;plus webmaster Jon Iverson, Ultimate AV's Fred Mantegian, and your humble servant, taking the picture&151;were having a good
time, about to go out to dinner. Then, in the cab on the way to the restaurant,
Jonathan realized that he had left his new digital camera back at the Sheraton,
on the table that you see in the picture. A frantic call to the Sheraton,
asking them to look for the camera, was to no avail. Then, after dinner, when we
got back to the hotel, as we got out of the cab, we were spotted by Maureen
Jenson, Editor of <I>Home Theater</I> magazine, who called out to Jonathan: "Did you get your camera?" It turns out that Maureen found the camera, and had passed it on to one of the <I>Stereophile</I> staff to return to Jonathan. Disaster averted!

Over at the other end of the Nagra/Verity Audio/Silversmith/Sonic Euphoria room, there was a far more modest system set up: Ayre C-5xe universal player, Sonic Euphoria PLC ($1295), Audio Silver Night Mk.III monoblocks ($9300/pair, 18Wpc), and Verity Fidelity Encore loudspeakers ($11,994/pair), all connected by Silversmith's silver cables.

HE2006 had DJs Ming & FS, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and jazz from the Anthony Wilson Nonet, alto saxophonist, Zane Musa, John Heard and Company on Friday; jazz from guitarist Chris Standring and singer Melora Hardin, along with the incomparable Dr. John doing his Dr. John thing on Saturday; and my own trio doing jazz on Sunday. But classical music enthusiasts were not forgotten at the Show: Sunday saw the Arroyo String Quartet, joined by soprano Kathleen Winters for Mozart's sublime <I>Exultate Jubilate</I>, perform a fine set. A treat for the ears!

Information travels by jungle telegram at these shows, so by Sunday, I'd heard that I <I>had</I> to hear Nagra's set-up about 50 times. As a result, when I walked into the Nagra/Verity Audio/Silversmith/Audion/Sonic Euphoria room, I was startled to see, not one, but <I>two</I> systems&mdash;and the pricier of the two was off in the room's corner with its back to a curved bank of windows, leaving the $35,000/pair Verity Sarastros firing into the room at a more acute angle than I'd ever attempt. It sounded good, though. In fact, it sounded fantastic!

For the fourth year in a row, the Home Entertainment Show was the venue for a raffle organized by analog specialty distributor Musical Surroundings. Shown here with the grand prize, a Pathos Classic One integrated amplifier is winner Stanley Moore (center), with Musical Surroundings' Garth Leerer (left) and <I>Stereophile</I>'s Michael Fremer, who pulled the winning entries from a box in the time-honored, double-blind manner. Our congratulations to all the winners.

I walked into Music Direct's room and asked Bes Nievera, "What's new?"

Just got back from the John Atkinson/Bob Reina/Allen Perkins jazz trio concert and it was great! Especially when you consider that these guys only play together once a year at the HE shows.