My beat was loudspeakers above $12,000. Do you have any idea how many loudspeakers above $12,000 were shown at CES 2008? I do. Practically every room on the 29th, 30th, 34th, and 35th floor of the Venetian hotel—which is to say, every room in the CES’ primary high-end-audio exhibition area—had a pair or two playing merrily away in the spots where minibars stocked with four-dollar cans of Coke and fifteen-dollar nips of Scotch once stood.