Celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, Danish Audio Loudspeakers Incorporated (DALI) displayed some of their historic loudspeakers lines in the (from left to right) DALI 7, Skyline and DaCapo.  Admitting association with any of these would reveal your age so be careful.

The famous and current DALI Megalines ($50k) were on display and sounded impressive as one could expect considering less than stellar room conditions. Yes, I'll admit there was a sonic resemblance (these served as my former reference) that had me nodding my head in appreciation.

Walking the show proved a treat for the senses. Visually stunning as they are colorful, these static displays were as exciting as some of the showrooms.

Active Audio, German distributors for Avalon, Pass, Bladelius and Transparent, always show in full force. Avalon's Isis loudspeaker ($65k in cherry-wood), and strapped to pair of 400-watt Hovland Stratos mono amps ($50k photo left). The dCS Paganini CD player handled all the digital playback while a German made and very attractive 'table from Bauer Audio handled the LPs. Cabling and AC conditioning was by way of Transparent Ultra.  Sound, as you would expect from such products, was superb as it is each year I visit this room.

Swedish based Bladelius Design Group smartly decided to make a player (no name and priced at around $7k) that would have no moving parts, and store everything bit-perfect, on flash-memory much like the Nova Physics Memory player.  The results they found in preliminary testing were similar as well: "outperforms standard transport based devices by a long shot!" says designer Michael Bladelius.

It has become apparent for some time, to me and my cohorts certainly, that the superiority of conventional CD players over their computer-based counterparts will end sooner than even we expected.