VTL Amplifiers, Inc. introduced the $3000 TL-2.5i Performance Preamplifier at CES 2016. It features 6 line inputs, an optional $2000, internally retrofitable phono stage, two pairs of outputs, and a tape loop.

Scientific Audio Electronics (SAE), founded in 1967, has been out of business for decades. Recently, Morris Kessler of ATI, manufacturers of the ATI and Theta brands,helped restore the company. At CES, Bill Skaer, National Director of Sales, presented the firm's latest amplifier, the 125 lb, SAE 2 HP-D Display version ($19,995).

Quad electrostatic loudspeakers have been unavailable in the United States retail market for the past few years because there has been no importer. In the past 12 months, MoFi Distribution has stepped up to develop a dealer network and provide service. Jonathan Derda, Mo-Fi's National Sales and Marketing Manager, described the new service center in Fairfax, Virginia that will service all vintages and versions of the loudspeaker.

Finished in Lancaster Grey, the Quad PA-One headphone amplifier is a full-tube design, with a built-in DAC.

Pass Laboratories designer Wayne Colburn showed me their new INT-60 Integrated amplifier ($9000). Rated at 60Wpc, the amplifier uses the same heatsinks, power supplies, and output stages as the Pass Point 8 power amplifiers.

Pass Laboratories celebrated its 25th Anniversary in business by introducing its HPA-1 headphone amplifier ($3500). The circuitry is a two-stage CFA topology using cascaded ultra-low noise Toshiba JFETs driving complementary Fairchild power MOSFETs running in class-A.

Matthieu Latour, Nagra's Marketing Director, spent time showing me the Swiss company's new Classic Integrated Amplifier ($19,450). Both Nagra's Classic Integrated Amplifier and Classic stereo power amplifier deliver 100Wpc into 8 ohms and are strikingly similar, but differ in that the integrated unit has 3 RCA inputs and 1 XLR input and cannot be bridged. It uses a solid-state circuit preamplifier section. The Classic Integrated amplifier will be available in May, 2016.

The Thiel TM3 loudspeakers ($3500/pair) looked extremely nice—but it was hard to listen. All I could think about was that girl on the poster's lips and the shadows on her cheeks. The cut angles on the TM3s seemed to match her face. And the flowers—I can't remember the last time I saw flowers in a CES room.

PrimaLuna products flesh out texture, hall sound, and instrumental color better than the tube amps of yore and on the scale of warm to cool, PrimaLuna is always exactly in the middle—as in Goldilocks' "just right." In fact, I would have to say that PrimaLuna's just-right neutrality is its #1 best trait.

Last year, I raved-reviewed the Hegel H160 integrated amplifier. It was probably the best all-around integrated amp I studied. I laughed that it had only two analog inputs but six assorted digital ones. I didn't laugh while the H160 grabbed every loudspeaker in my house by its cojones and gently forced the frightened cones to submit. Maybe it was the black mask faceplate or maybe was Hegel's SoundEngine technology. I don't know, but unquestionably, the H160's 150Wpc (into 8 ohms) had a very special way with speaker cones.