Swiss Nagra embraces your fantasizes of owning audio equipment styled like the cockpit of a Russian MiG fighter jet. Feminine tastes be damned, this stuff is rad. And it sounds great as well, or so was the opinion of everyone who heard the Nagra/Verity room.

Nagra is making a resurgence with a handful of components coming out of the ultra-expensive pro scene. That CD-C transport was the star of the room. The entire CD drive mechanism ejects from the transport and can, I'm told, support hundreds of pounds of pressure (but don't test it). The player also has a solid state line stage built in, as can be seen in the larger pics next page. Price for the Nagra CD-C is expected to be between $10k and $16k. On the very top is the Nagra V professional recorder.

Below, those barefoot-in-a-dark-room-nightmares on the floor are the $19,295 Nagra VPA monoblock amps using 845 tubes for 50 watts of juice. On the bottom of the rack is the $15,995 Nagra MPA solid state amp pumping out 250 watts which was playing when I was there. An integrated version of the MPA with remote is also available for $18, 995. In the middle of the rack is Audion's Quattro double box preamp which was used for most of the show.

All cabling was solid palladium wire by Silversmith. Prices are as follows:

Six foot speaker cables: $9800
Three foot interconnects: $4000
Dixie cup cable elevators: Priceless

Keep reading for some of the coolest photos from the show.