News

"New York, New York, It's an Audio Town!" After far too many years without a large-scale audio show, New York City is about to get a taste of what regularly enriches the lives of audiophiles in other major centers around the world. The first, hopefully annual New York Audio and AV Show, brought to you by the same Chester Group that mounts audio shows in the UK, Australia, and Sweden, and by T.H.E. Show USA, takes place in Park Avenue's grand Waldorf=Astoria Hotel at 301 Park Avenue on Friday April 13–Sunday, April 15.

Friday–Sunday, April 13–15, 10am–8pm: Stereo Exchange (627 Broadway, New York, NY) will host a weekend-long series of demonstrations from key players in the hi-fi industry including but not limited to an Einstein-haired speaker designer, young gun salesman, and the king of kables.

2L, the Norwegian label that made audiophile history in 2006 when one their early high-resolution SACDs, Immortal NYSTEDT, received Grammy Award nominations for "Best Surround Sound Album" and "Best Choral Performance," has taken a big step back to the future. After releasing a number of recordings packages that feature both hybrid SACD and hi-resolution Blu-ray discs, as well as making their DXD (352.8kHz/24-bit) recordings available for download, 2L has just ventured into the black hole known as vinyl.

Unique circumstances conspired to make the March 15 US debut of Raidho's handsome 2.1, 2.5-way floorstanding loudspeaker ($28,000/pair) at AudioVision San Francisco an unusual event. Despite ample planning on everyone's part, US Customs, which has never been known for putting audiophiles first, held up delivery of Raidho's new babies until the afternoon of the demo. Did they perhaps think that the "Raid" in Raidho was code for a terrorist plot?

Due to this unforeseeable snafu, what a very full house of eager audiophiles heard was not the Raidho 2.1 in all its glory, but a literally out-of-the-crate speaker whose drivers, capacitors, and circuits, by all accounts, had undergone only something like 5 hours of break-in. There was nothing that even Nordost's Lars Christensen, creator of the most masterfully conceived and executed audio demos I have ever witnessed, could do about the fact that the speaker could only provide an tantalizing albeit incomplete indication of its ultimate potential.

The late Bill Monroe may have been the father of bluegrass music, but it was the distinctive banjo playing of Earl Scruggs that most listeners came to recognize as the voice of an entire style. Scruggs, who died on March 28 at the age of 88, left an indelible imprint on American music, influencing virtually ever player of the five-string banjo to follow.

Sunday, April 22, 2-5pm: The Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society will hold its monthly meeting at Evolution Audio Video (5341 Derry Avenue #S, Agoura Hills, CA). The event includes presentations from Dave Kakenmaster, Western Region Sales Manager for GoldenEar, as well as Tony Weber, Sales Manager at Cary Audio, as well as a mega-raffle with stupendous prizes.

The magic numbers, for Salon Son et Image, are 25, 100, and 10,000. Canada's first and largest high-end audio show, whose 25th-anniversary show arrives March 23–25 (press day March 22) in downtown Montreal's Hilton Bonaventure, expects to set a new attendance record as up to 10,000 visitors explore 100 exhibit rooms.

The debut of the Mårten Django loudspeaker at David Michael Audio (4341 Delemere Court, Royal Oak, MI) originally slated for March 17th, has been moved to Saturday, April 7, Noon–7pm.

Follow this link for more details on the event and the history of Stereophile's coverage of the Mårten Django. Review forthcoming.

The largest consumer audio show in America's Southland, AXPONA (Audio Expo North America), returns to its roots when it opens in Jacksonville on Friday March 9. The three-day show, which launched in Jacksonville in 2010, has happily switched locations from a "not-ready-for-primetime" venue to the more upscale Omni Jacksonville.

What the hotel offers audiophiles, besides its amenities and lovely waterfront, is its neighbor across the street, Jacoby Hall in the Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts. Home of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, the hall's much touted superior acoustics—mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade has called them "sensational"—offer attendees the opportunity to refresh their ears with the sound of a live, unamplified orchestra in a very special hall. What better way to tell if the audio systems you're hearing present a reasonable facsimile of the real thing?

Wednesday, February 29, 5–9pm: Definitive Audio (6206 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA) will host an evening devoted to the reproduction of music and the joy of listening. Stereophile’s Editor John Atkinson and Assistant Editor/Entry Level columnist Stephen Mejias will be giving presentations in the Wilson/D’Agostino and Linn rooms, respectively.