AXPONA 2018
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I was really burned out from a long work week at nearby Northwestern University. I was so looking forward to AXPONA as the medicine to my working man blues. The only thing stopping me was insane traffic between Evanston and Schaumburg where the new hotel venue was. This was post-apocalyptic Atlanta traffic. But finally we arrived and it was worth the hassle. AXPONA was really superb this year. The Renaissance Center staff was friendly and the venue was beautiful. Very spacious, it [...] -
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CAF 2017
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The Story Fern & Roby doesn’t really fit in with the current audiophile culture. I also don’t think they want to. That’s not to say they aren’t focused on creating the best sound they can. Given the chance to meet and listen to Christopher Hildebrand you will hear his soft spoken effusing of long hours in the shop refining and experimenting with materials and implementations of speaker components. On display is a full gambit of turntables and electronics crafted from high quality [...] -
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RMAF 2017
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This year’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest was a blast. With the Marriott Tech Center all put back together and a lot of manufacturers and people in attendance, it felt like the show was back up to the normal high-energy level. As usual, there was more to cover than I had time for. And I covered rooms solid from early in the morning until late at night all three days. There are so many great people involved in high end audio that I get energized by the excitement in the rooms and in the [...] -
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LA Audio Show 2017
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While this may have been the inaugural Los Angeles Audio Show, it had an air of familiarity about it that made for an easygoing experience. Everything seemed to run like a well-oiled machine, and the venue – the Sheraton Gateway Hotel – had plenty of space, and it’s forked-path hallway set-up (lamented by many, but not me) made it easy to take in a large number of rooms per floor without feeling like you were being squeezed out a tube of toothpaste like some long-hallway shows can. [...] -
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High End Society in Munich 2017
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Another show, another great show actually. It is useless pointing out how good of a show Munich has became in recent years. This is the place to be for everybody, starting from emerging realities and young designers all the way to established brands and legends of this small industry of ours. No exception this year either, and I did notice than more and more US strongholds are moving towards the German city after the debacle that has been the latest Vegas CES, nowadays focused on cell phones [...] -
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AXPONA 2017
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This year’s AXPONA was the second one I attended and I thought it was a very well produced event. Many manufacturers were represented and attendance appeared very healthy. And there is no shortage of good out-of-the-hotel dining experiences in Chicago. I am looking forward to the next one. Our colleague John Stancavage has griped about he absence of CDs and I must agree. I may be a bit biased about this format since I have been collecting them since they came out in 1982. DACs [...] -
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CES 2017
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This CES was my first. Thing is, it just might be my last. Consensus among fellow journalists, hi-fi manufacturers, distributors, and bricks & mortar owners is that it’s no longer a good fit for home audio, and attendance by companies who pursue higher fidelity had dropped significantly from previous years according to long-time attendees. Up on the 29~32 floors in the Venetian Tower there was grumbling about AARP, and Simmons Mattresses being slotted-in by CES organizers [...] -
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RMAF 2016
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Lee Scoggins offered up his photo portrait tour from RMAF this year. These are the people that made this show great. Well, at least some of them. [...] -
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TAVES 2016
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By Richard H. Mak At 5 pm on Sunday, I stayed behind to help DVL Audio as well as Audio by Mark Jones with packing up their equipment, and it was at that moment I realized [...] -
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CAF 2016
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I’ve been to a lot of audio shows, it’s true. Doesn’t make me an expert, however — there are a few decades of these things that I simply don’t [...] -
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T.H.E. Show @ Newport 2016
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OK, I grant you that it has been a couple of months since the end of T.H.E. Show in Newport Beach. So, what the heck is your motley Part-Time Audiophile crew doing still [...] -
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High End Society in Munich 2016
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If you are kind enough as to read through the end, you will also know my favorite rooms of this year’s Munich’s High End show. But first, let me tell you why we do show [...] -
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AXPONA 2016
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My first AXPONA was five years ago in Atlanta. It was about as far from 2016 as you can get. Then, there was something like 20 rooms. Five years later, and the difference is [...] -
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CanJam Global: SoCal
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CanJam SoCal was a fantastic show. I’ll be honest — I wasn’t expecting much. CanJam, for me and many others, has always been an entirely embedded affair, [...] -
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