Go Ahead Make My [Sun]Day
Thank goodness for the extra hour afforded by the return to standard time from daylight savings time. I really needed the hour in Toronto in the midst of the TAVES show. Because of some parking craziness, I had to wake up at 1 am Saturday night/Sunday morning and purchase some additional hours for my rented car in the underground parking. Anyway, I enjoyed getting the extra time as I headed for the King Edward Hotel for the last day of the 2013 show early the next morning.
Sunday’s are always the slowest day at these types of trade shows. Most people come out for Saturday and cruise the various rooms looking and listening at high-end audio. But there’s also something special about Sunday. I’ve started to notice a pattern over the past few years. It’s not exactly a scientifically valid result but I have noticed that a substantial number of customers return to the sales table after they’ve had a chance to experience an AIX Recording.
One particularly memorable event was years ago at the last Stereophile Show in New York. A New York policeman/audiophile came bought the AIX Records sampler disc based on my assurances that it would be worth the $10. The guy went home that evening and listened to the tracks on the sampler. This was the previous “High Resolution Audio Experience” sampler that we did with Intel years ago. The policeman came back the next afternoon all excited by what he had experienced. He snatched up about 3-4 DVD-Audio/Video titles including Laurence Juber (our best selling title!), Nitty Gritty Surround with Jennifer Warnes and the Bach Brandenburg Concertos No. 3 & 5.
As he explained to me when he returned to the table on Sunday, he had a party for some of his police buddies that Saturday evening and played the new AIX Records discs and they were very impressed. So on Sunday…when the table is about empty…he AND his buddies came rushing to the table looking to pick up bunch of our recordings. It was amazing. I felt like Johnny Appleseed planting high-definition audio seeds in a new community and seeing the results in just a couple of days. They were somewhat let down because most of the disc had been sold over the preceding two days. I mailed them what they wanted.
The same thing happened this past weekend in Toronto. Robert and his lovely wife came by the table on Friday to kick the tires. I convinced him to invest in one of our HD-Audio Blu-ray samplers. This disc is what I use to demo at the shows…41 tracks, 3 different mixes AND high definition video of all of the tracks. This is the perfect introduction to our recent catalog AND the magic of our recording technique. They are samples rather than complete tunes but that didn’t seem to phase anyone. There was one guy that was peeved that I didn’t include 41 full-length tracks on the disc but he was the exception to the rule.
Robert and several others came back on Sunday with hand written lists of titles that they wanted to purchase. He told me that the AIX tracks were “absolutely incredible. He was blown away!” He said they were among the best things he had ever heard on this system.
The bad part is that by Sunday the table was pretty picked over. I’ve made arrangements to send him and several other new converts the discs that they want…and the shipping is on me. It was great show!
