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Franc Kuzma showed us his $900 VynVac record cleaner. "It's compact and, when it's not in use, it doesn't take up much space," he told us.

Is there any record collector who hasn't wished for a device that would flatten warped records without damaging them? It's the classic "why doesn't somebody invent that?" product.

Pathos Acoustics has one of the uniquest design esthetics in audio. Paolo Anriolo and Giaani Borinato beamed with delight as Jon Iverson and I <I>oohed</I> and <I>ahhed</I> over the $8000 Endorphin CD player and $1950 InControl preamplifier.

Pathos products don't resemble anything else in the audio world, but the $35,000/pair 150W Adrenaline Class-A monoblock is stunning even in a room packed with other Pathos gear. It's a zero feedback design and it sounded even more stunning than it looked.

Penaudio's Sami Pentill&#228; brought an entirely new line of loudspeakers to CES: the Ambient series.

At the GamuT house, the first beauty that caught my eye was their new Phi3 loudspeaker dressed in drop-dead gorgeous zebra wood. "In Europe," said designer Lars Goller, "anything striped is really hot right now."

All GamuT speakers sport a ring-radiator tweeter. The pointy thing in the middle is a metal waveguide&mdash;the perfect defense against little children poking in the tweeter dome.

GamuT doesn't rent a display room at one of the hotels, instead they figure the best way to show off home loudspeakers is in a home. So they rent a palatial pad in the Las Vegas suburbs, invite us over for dinner (they fly in a Danish cook and assistant) and then we retire to the living room to check out the speakers and electronics.

VAS Audio's Sze Leung is the most consistently <I>up</I> audiophile we know&mdash;he's always raving about his latest listening session or discovery. "This one's incredible," he exclaimed, pointing to the 80Wpc Cayin H-80A Class-A tube hybrid integrated amplifier (approximately $4000)."