Lionel Goodfield, VP of Marketing at Simaudio, introduces a new preamp and monoblock in the flagship Moon lineup.

NAD's new M5 CD/SACD player features AES/EBU PCM digital output, separate 2-channel and 5-channel analog outputs, bass management for SACD, Burr Brown 24 bit 192 kHz audio DACs, and pure class A discrete gain modules. With a suggested list price of $1,799.00 it complements the rest of the NAD Master series of components.

The Harman Specialty Group's booth was nearly set up for Thursday's official opening when we snapped these photos of the new Revel Ultima2 series. The tallest is the new Salon2 ($22,000/pair), the smaller floor-stander is the new Studio2 ($16,000/pair, not shown, but similarly styled) The others were the Gem2 (not shown) and Voice2 (photo below). The new Ultima2s will roll out gradually, with the Salon and Studio due around the first of the year and the other pieces scheduled in late winter or early spring 2007.

Toshiba fired another salvo in the ongoing next-gen HD disc format war by announcing that it will have its second-generation HD DVD players to market by the end of 2006.
The $499 HD-A2 will street in October, with the step-up $999 HD-XA2 following in December.

Silicon Valley based Niveus Media made compelling announcements of its new media servers, which are based on Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center platform and also use Intel’s Viiv technology. While digital photos and music are on tap, as with many media servers, what will separate Niveus’ machines is the ability to handle HD DVD and other high-definition content.

Optoma was producing a terrific picture on a big screen (estimated at about 12-feet wide) using an add-on Schneider anamorphic lens on the company's new HD81 1080p single-chip DLP projector. The projector goes for $7000, the lens is a $4000 option (lens available in November)