Scott Wilkinson

To borrow a line from <I>UAV</I> reviewer David Vaughn, CES 2009 is now receding in the rear-view mirror. It was a grueling week during which we all put many miles on our shoes&#151;and cars, since Gary Altunian, Kim Wilson, and I all drove to the show and around Las Vegas, avoiding what we thought would be long cab lines. (We would have all driven together to be more eco-friendly, except that each of us was heading in a different direction after the show.)

When I first heard about the flagship 069 CD player from German high-end manufacturer <A href="http://www.burmester.de/en/">Burmester Audio</A>, I was surprised to learn that it is belt driven. Of course, many LP turntables use belt drives, but I'd never heard of a CD player with such a mechanism, which is said to decouple the platter from the rest of the chassis, eliminating vibrations and allowing the data to be read with considerably higher precision and less jitter.