It was great to meet Steve and the rest of the WBF guys at THE Show, these show rooms are chaotic and the room we had was even more so because we had 6 demo systems in the room!
Yes audio fans, I said 6 systems in one big square room and only two Phase11 tape decks, some systems were pointed this way and some pointed that way, nothing optimal. Not even a proper audio rack in the room everything sat on tables.
It is always difficult to get good sound under show conditions with one system in a room, with 6 systems (sitting on tables) in each others way it can be unusually challenging. Just the power delivery issues from maybe one 15A or 20A circuit to power everything becomes... limiting. To play all these systems it was musical chairs in the room as show goers moved their chairs to listen to each system, it was chaos at times but we worked it out.
You never know what you are getting into when you agree to show.
However I did enjoy hearing my decks with the Ayon system and also with the Gauder Akustik speakers and AVM electronics it is always great to meet new audio friends. Dr. Roland Gauder and Udo Besser of AVM have "strongly" requested that I show my UHA decks with them at the Munich Show next year and since they have graciously offered for me to show for free why not??? They liked the sound we were getting with the UHA decks and their equipment. Charlie Harrison has also asked for me to show with him at RMAF, he plans to have the new large Ayon speakers along with probably another 8 or 10 systems in the room, ha!
For me the highlights of this show from my perspective were as follows.
1.) Lots of people coming just to hear tape in the room. I am talking people who said they have never heard it before but had read about it and thought they should check it out, new converts??
2.) The "after hours" listening events in the MBL room were great, turn out all the lights and just let the energy of the music light up the room. A nice glass of wine and sit back and enjoy.
3.) Lots of people asking lots of questions about getting tape in their systems, questions about decks and music and the future of tape, great stuff!
4.) Lots of impressed listeners and converted to tape heads, which seems to be happening at all the shows I am doing. Roland Gauder and Udo Besser said that they thought this tape thing was crazy and had determined before the show that they did not want to play a tape deck in their system, that changed after they listened.
5.) The new Groove Note tapes supplied by Ying Tan were quite nice and even come on Quantegy GP9 tape, believe it or not.
6.) I also liked the Cuddle Magic tape supplied by Jonathan Horwich, very different music but I like it.
7.) Also like the fact that I sold two decks at the show.
If a person wanted to attend an audio show and also enjoy a few days after the show in a place I highly recommend a trip to the Newport show, the Orange County area, Laguna Beach and Newport are awesome!
The next show for UHA will be The Capital Audiofest, then RMAF, hope to see lots of WBF guys there.