California Audio Show

I took last Friday off to attend this show. Audio equipments always have a special place in my life, all the way back from the days I listened to mono earphone out from a portable cassette player. During my glorious audiophile days in late 90s, I had a turntable, vacuum tube amps setup with a decent pair of speakers. That was the first time I attended a Hifi show, hosted by the biggest name in audio business, the Stereophile magazine, in St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco. That show only comes to SF every few years and I went to another in 2003. This California Audio show is hosted by a lesser known company at a less fancy hotel (Crowne Plaza in Burlingame) but there was no lack of big names. There are a few things I like about hifi show: 1) I get to listen to extremely expensive equipments, 2) the shows usually feature live performances, 3) audiophile-grade CD were being demo-ed and promoted. No exception this time. The usual suspect of outrageously expensive speakers like Wilson Audio and MBL were all there. A pair of Acappala speakers (with horns) went for $80k. On the other hand, I also listened to some very reaonably priced speakers like the small bookshelf Martin Logan ($800 a pair) and Audio Space LS3/5A ($1800/pr) and everything in between, like Anthony Gallo and Sony. The latter was a big surprise. Even though Sony has a good reputation in terms of sound quality for their consumer products, they are only well-known for their CD players among high-end audiophiles. The Sony speakers at the show did its job of making a statement: Sony is capable of playing the high-end game too (just that they don't play it often, especially outside Japan) Another observation I had is that digital file-based media is on the rise. It was non-existent at the 97 show and barely present at the 03 show but it is getting its share (a smaller one) alongside CD and vinyl. Many demo-ed solutions with iPod docks or harddrives for music storage, and iPad as controller. The highlights for me were Blue Coast Record's room and 2 live recording demo sessions. During these sessions, they recorded live musicians playing there and playback the recordings to the audiences right after. It was very educational. And I enjoyed guitarist Greg James' playing a lot.