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 just how much work and effort exhibitors have to put into a short 3 day show. Unlike a major show such as the CES or Munich High End which are paid for by the manufacturers, a number of exhibitors at TAVES are brick and mortar stores who not only have to pay out of pocket, they also sacrifice family time and store hours in hopes that the public will appreciate them enough so that it will lead to business transactions down the road, hopefully enough to cover the cost of the show.
There are a number of good sounding rooms at the show and I wish I can cover them all, but the truth of the matter is there were some bad photos didn’t turn out usable, or not enough information had been written down to provide proper coverage. Very often writing the show report takes much longer than show itself.
I regret not being able to provide coverage for exhibitors such Audio Alchemy / PMC, or Jeff Joseph’s room for the above reasons, because both rooms are fantastic sounding. Brian Taylor’s Grammaphone room also had an interesting Active versus Passive demo on the ATC40 speakers, and his room next door with the Marten Design speakers driven by Musical Fidelity are equally great sounding, but I have forgotten to take pictures for the coverage. May be I’ll do better next year!
An editor of another audio magazine once told me, this business is all about the gear and the money, nothing more, it is never about the people. Looking back at past that 35 years an audiophile, I thought to myself how wrong he has been. Audio as a hobby is as much as it is about the music, the gear, the friendship and the fun we can have with meeting all sorts of wonderful people, especially at a show like TAVES.
Thanks to Jim Fairhead and David Johann of Tenor Audio, they sponsored a party at my house on Friday night which was attended by a number of local audiophiles and industry friends. We enjoy wine and music on the all Tenor still system till 3 am in the morning. Thankfully most of them were able to make it back to the show the next morning. Unbeknownst to my guest, my speakers had a damaged tweeter which was replaced only 12 hours before the event, otherwise it would have been a great embarrassment showing the Tenor system with a damaged tweeter. I must comment on the excellent warranty service which Mike O’Connor (VP of Gemsen, Canadian distributor for Dynaudio), and Otto Jørgensen (Manager, Dynaudio Denmark) provided for me. The new tweeter arrived just in time for the event, and all the guest were able to enjoy tunes coming out of an all Tenor and Dynaudio Temptation system to their amazement and satisfaction.
Please enjoy some photos of the event, and see you at TAVES 2017!
Richard H. Mak
