I'd heard a lot about Quad's upgraded <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/720/">ESL-989</A&gt; speakers, renamed the Quad 2905 ($11,500/pair), so I dropped by the company's exhibit at the Alexis Park to check out these electrostatic floorstanders.

I was sipping my gin'n'tonic, watching a hologram of a scantily clothed dancer and soaking up some serious party ambience at <I>Stereophile</I>, <I>UAV</I>, and <I>Home Theater</I> magazines' annual CES bash, held this year at the Venetian Hotel's Vivid night club, when a tap on my shoulder snapped me back to business. It was jolly Craig Oxford, president of former Nearfield Acoustics, the company responsible for the balls-to-the-wall, cost-no-limit, Pipedreams loudspeaker system.

Sometime <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/011006mothers/">near the close of Sunday</a>, when vinyl was being slipped into sleeves and room treatments were coming down, I wandered my way to the end of a hall at the St. Tropez, where I heard such sweet music emanating from the LSA Group/DK Design suite.

Used by B&#246;sendorfer in their demo, the Art Audio Adagio has to be one of the most beautiful tube amplifiers made. If you see it and <I>don't</I> want it, you have no soul.

During CES, I kept hearing about GamuT's luxury digs offsite way out in the suburbs beyond McCarran International Airport. "It's incredible," Stephen Mejias assured me. "It has a pool, a pool table, beautiful kitchen, and a Danish chef who will make anything you want." That sounded nice, but <I>Stereophile</I>'s busy show-blogging schedule prevented me from partaking of that particular pleasure dome. "No problem," Lars Goller assured me. "We keep the house until Tuesday. Come by on Monday after the show and we'll spend as much time as you want bringing you up to speed."

T+A's Siegfried Amft thinks different. That's obvious from his beautifully designed tube and solid-state products, an observation that cruelly ignores how good they sound. I was happy to see that Amft made it to the show, because I reckoned that meant he had something new and startling to demonstrate. He did: Criterion TCI 2 Active loudspeakers ($25,500/pair), sarcophagi incorporating twin carbon fiber 10" woofers in a selaed enclosure, a 7" specially tuned midrange cone, and a curved electrostatic panel that Amft claims can produce SPLs above 120dB "while maintaining superb membrane travel and distortion characteristics."

<i>Written in blue ink on the white space of pages of <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/homepage/index.html">Fast Company magazine</a>, while waiting for the plane, yesterday morning, at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.</i>

Real men spin!

NASA announced Monday that Hubble reveals Polaris to be a triple star system.

Counterfeit products proliferate. Know your source, as we used to say in the '60s.