While the dCS and Nagra suites at the Mirage approximated the size of a typical medium sized living room, the YG suite at the top of the Venetian was something else entirely. The room was quite large, the speakers human size, and a bigger crowd was also on hand. Lori Lieberman was playing on the system as we walked in and YG's Director of Sales, Dick Diamond greeted us with a big smile and helped me get the laptop connected.

Jake was going to hear his music for the first time on a system totaling over half a million dollars.

"We do have a new BAT amplifier," replied MoFi Distribution's Managing Director, Norbert Schmied, to my standard room-entry inquiry. I had drifted into the MoFi room, which was busier than most exhibit rooms at the Venetian Hotel…

Bea Lam (that's her hand in the photo above) demonstrated the VTL phono preamplifier's varied display options…

Jürgen Reis, MBL's lead engineer, was delighted to show me the company's new 560W (into 4 ohms), mono power amplifier, the MBL N15 ($17,800). Slimmer than MBL's reference-line amplifiers, four N15s (for bi-amping) fit into one equipment rack.

Rogers High Fidelity introduced their new 65Wpc 65V-1 integrated amplifier ($4000) as part of a neat system: Besides the EL34 stereo Rogers amp, the system included a pair of EgglestonWorks Niko Bookshelf speakers ($2500/pair), and a Detroit-manufactured Shinola Runwell turntable ($2500).

The Swiss manufacturer Soulution introduced the $32,000, 75-lb Soulution 511 stereo amplifier at CES 2017. Rated conservatively at 150Wpc into 8 ohms, it delivers 280Wpc into 4 ohms and 560Wpc into 2 ohms.

The ebullient Irv Gross, Director of Sales at Constellation, greeted me when I walked into the company's exhibit room at CES 2017. He pointed to the back of the room when I asked whether Constellation had introduced a new amplifier: there waited the 185-lb, 500Wpc Centaur II Stereo ($55,000), connected to a pair of Magico M3 loudspeakers ($84,000/pair) via thick MIT speaker cables.

Now this should be interesting. We walk down the hall to the Nagra suite (in a similarly sized room to dCS) and there are the same speakers we just heard at dCS, but this time with completely different electronics. I set up my laptop, with Roon in "Exclusive Mode" as always, and test that we have sound.

Due to a scheduling conflict I missed the press conference with power point presentation (you can see the slides here), but having spent some time with Chord's Rob Watts in the past, I'm sure the new products are packed with carefully thought out tech. Pictured here is the new Chord Hugo₂, which follows on the heels of the successful Hugo DAC launched three years ago.

The palm-sized Chord Mojo DAC/Headphone amp is arguably one of the best portable audio invigoration devices around, so why not add some more super-powers? The Poly is a networking "module" which adds streaming, network and SD card playback to the Mojo. The Poly is about half the size of the Mojo and snaps onto one end. Very clever.