News

Saturday, November 10, 11am–3pm: Audio High (165 Moffett Boulevard, Mountain View, CA) hosts another vinyl sale to benefit the Friends of Palo Alto Library. Last year’s sale generated more than $1700 to benefit the Palo Alto Library, a cultural pillar to Santa Clara County community.

Some LPs that will be hallmarked for this sale include a Zappa collection, an assortment of French pop and avant-garde LPs, and as the “usual selection of hard-to-find rock and jazz titles.” Musical Surroundings and Clearaudio representatives will be at the benefit to answer turntable related questions and showcase their products.

Saturday, November 3, 12pm: Advanced Audio Systems (6450 Tacoma Mall Boulevard, Tacoma, WA) will host a seminar with iconic loudspeaker designer Richard Vandersteen. The event will consist of product demonstrations and a question and answer session with Vandersteen. To register for the event, follow this link.

Friday–Sunday, November 23–25: The Hi-Fi Expo Sofia will be held at the Grand Hotel (1 Gurko Street, Sofia, Bulgaria). More than 250 high-end brands are expected to exhibit. For more info, visit www.hifiexpo.bg.

There is no need for Denver's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest to toot its own horn. The three-day affair, which opens at noon on Friday, October 12 in the Denver Marriott Tech Center, promises no less than 431 exhibitors; 174 exhibitor rooms, including 24 large ones (same since 2009): 41 miscellaneous vendors; 35 CANJAM vendors; and an impressive number of show debuts.

The largest US high-end audio show open to the public is also, despite its size and occasionally snow-encrusted environs, the warmest and friendliest audiophile show in the country. For this we owe thanks to Marjorie Baumert, who continues to nurture and sustain the show following the death of her show co-founder and husband, Al Stiefel, at the start of 2009; the exceptional staff at the comfortable Marriott; a dedicated cadre of volunteers drawn from the Colorado Audio Society and Marjorie's extended circle of friends and family; and exhibitors who, welcoming the relative peace and quiet of the location, approach the show as if reuniting with old friends.

Naxos stands poised to release its first 24-bit/96 kHz high-definition audio download. On October 2, one of the label's most important orchestral recordings for the fall quarter, conductor, arranger and composer Peter Breiner's new orchestrations of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Songs and Dances of Death, and The Nursery, will become available, not as a physical CD, but rather as high-resolution and MP3 downloads. Expect the link to appear on iTrax, eclassical, classicsonline, HDTracks, hiresaudio.com, theclassicalshop, and Ariama, with Linn and Onkyo coming on board soon thereafter.

The Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show (TAVES) launches its second annual three-day show on September 28 in downtown Toronto's historic King Edward Hotel. Produced by Canada HiFi's publisher/editor-in-chief, Suave Kajko, and his partner, Simon Au, and "presented by Porsche," TAVES promises multiple exhibit rooms in which between 65 and 70 exhibitors, over 80% of whom are manufacturers, will display approximately 274 component brands and media from 26 recording labels (CD, LP, and Blu-ray).

"I'm pretty excited about the preponderance of manufacturers, because they tend to have more elaborate set-ups and bring a lot more product with them," Kajko told Stereophile.

It was an audio demo quite unlike most others. Less than two weeks after the debut, at CEDIA 2012 in Indianapolis, of Steinway Lyngdorf's Model LS Concert two-way floor-standing dipole line-source loudspeaker/sound system, the LS Concert joined two other complete Steinway Lyngdorf systems for a "very first" quasi-public unveiling in San Francisco. Jointly staged on two floors of a Pacific Heights mansion, the event was hosted by several entities—Steinway Lyngdorf, a collaboration between piano maker Steinway & Sons and legendary audio innovator Peter Lyngdorf; Sherman Clay, the largest Steinway dealer in the United States; Engineered Environments, a residential systems design and installation firm that specializes in customized technological "solutions," including home entertainment systems, for a "discerning clientele"; and the Luxury Marketing Council of San Francisco. Hence the RSVP and "business attire" required, valet parking, catered event targeted, not audiophiles, but instead a select group of home builders, architects, custom installers, real estate brokers, and venture capitalists.