Constellation, a consortium of designers headed up by industry veteran Peter Madnick introduced the long awaited Perseus phono preamplifier designed by the legendary John Curl who says this is his best yet phono preamplifier.

Working with an industrial designer adept at things white prefaced in the letter "i" Music Hall has come up with this cool white ikura turntable built to spec by the Pro-Ject folks that build other Music Hall turntables. Cost is $900 with carbon fiber tonearm. Very smart looking.

That calling the goings on in Roy Hall's Music Hall room "the real world" is indicative of just how bizarre this business can be. Along with shots of single-malt, Hall and his partner Leland Leard demoed some new reasonably priced analog gear including this $599 Creek MM/MC phono preamp that's dip-switch configurable and given Mike Creek's experience and track record, probably sounds very fine.

Vladimir Lamm took me through his new 3 box LP 1 Signature phono preamplifier. Each channel has its own power supply. The all-tube design uses transformers for the first MC stage. There are three inputs: two MC, one MM.

Zanden introduced its new Model 120 prototype phono preamp, the company's first solid-state design. The estimated price is $7500. I have no more details to report other than that it sounded good playing a Buddy Guy lacquer I brought to the show.

McIntosh introduced a new prototype turntable built to the company's specs by Clearaudio.

Bob Graham introduced the new Phantom Elite tonearm at CES 2013 mounted on the eye-catching $85,000 Air Force One turntable he is distributing in the United States (currently under review). The 'table is designed by legendary Micro-Seiki creator Hideaki Nishikawa, with whom I had a long and productive chat at the show about the design.

Triplanar debuted a 12" version of its popular tonearm at CES 2013. Key to the design is a new damped carbon fiber tube that maintains the effective mass of the 9" model.

Using the experience gained designing a direct drive motor for the Brinkmann Oasis and Bardo, Helmut Brinkmann is now building his own motors for use with the belt drive models in the line. I thought you'd like to see it.

UK based Avid introduced at CES the new Ingenium line of turntables. The base price for the machined aluminum plinthed 'table is $1300. So equipped, it comes with an MDF platter and bearing used on the Avid Diva. $2300 with Project 9cc carbon fiber arm. There's a $3000 version with an SME M2-9 inch arm as well as a more expensive range that uses the Volvere's bearing and aluminum platter.