And now for the small rooms at the Denver Marriott Tech Center...,

...many of which had, for some mysterious reason...,

...big speakers!

Crystal Cable's president Gabi van der Kley flew in from Holland to show the company's new Bridge -- basically an interconnect for your existing interconnects. You connect your interconnects to the Bridge, and then connect the Bridge to your equipment. The Bridge's conductors and filters (inside the connectors) affect the connected interconnect's ground wire. The company claims the Bridge reduces distortion -- something, Gabi says, that is measurable and audible. [www.crystalcable.com]

We're not sure where this guy flew in from.

Who's the foremost authority on analog playback today? Michael Fremer gets our vote. Here he is captured in his natural habitat -- digging through bins of LPs.