California Audio Show Day 3

Sorry for the very late post today. Following the close of the CAS5 show yesterday afternoon, my wife, our puppy Charlie, and I packed out of the Westin SFO Hotel and headed south to Palo Alto to spend the rest of Sunday afternoon and evening with a couple of very close old friends. In fact, if it weren’t for my friend and former student Bill and his lovely wife Kathy…I would not have met and married the love of my life, the mother of our three beautiful children, and had such a wonderful best friend and partner. It was great to be able to spend some time with them.

After playing some music (I mean actually playing guitar with Bill on mandolin) and eating a terrific dinner, I shared a few stories about the high-end audio world and in particular the California Audio Show. Bill is an audio engineer, musician, and more recently video producer at Cisco. It was a terrific evening with a couple that we hadn’t seen in a few years.

This morning as they went off to work, Mona, Charlie, and I began our long drive home. About an hour north of Los Angeles, I received a phone call from my friend Lorr from Smyth Research about the alignment session that was scheduled for 11 am at my studio. He wanted to let me know that the client was going to be late…something about some airplane mix up etc. My jaw dropped because I had forgotten about the session…argh! As it turned out, everything worked out fine. I showed just minutes after he arrived and we proceeded to get his ears measured in my 5.1 studio. But the session took longer than I had anticipated…thus the late post today.

The final day at the CAS was almost as busy as the previous two days. My hat is off to Constantine for creating and sustaining a very well organized show…everything went off smoothly. And I managed to practically clear my sales tables, which is always a very good thing.

Carl, a wonderful audiophile and friend that I’ve gotten to know over the last 15 years of managing my label, attended all three days of the show. The AIX Records tables were very centrally located so I began to notice than Carl was making repeated trips past my setup. We’d usually acknowledge each other…and I even chided him to stop and check out our latest projects. This guy was always on the move…on Saturday he was shuffling his friend (Steve?) back and forth, introducing him to the world of audiophiles…but he promised to stop by AND did so yesterday. We chatted, he listened and, yes, he did walk away with a few discs and both of the new samplers. A thoroughly pleasant man…thanks for coming by Carl. See you next time.

As for news or reports about the show…I didn’t get to visit many rooms. The word back from several people was not terribly enthusiastic about most of the playback systems. I did manage to hear Norman Greenbaum’s late 60’s classic “Spirit in the Sky” coming from a room down the hall. I love the song but I did wonder whether it’s the best demo track to play at an audiophile system. Oh hell, why not.