The 2015 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest Is Underway

Making the long trip from the Denver Airport to the 12th Annual Rocky Mountain International Audio Fest at the Marriott Tech Center, I got lost in the vast open plains (this ain't Brooklyn), the mountains, and Colorado's big dome sky. My mind wondered to the Ute, Sioux, Arapahoe, Crow, Cheyenne, and Apache tribes that inhabited these still primordial looking spaces.

I remember the photos of Native Americans by ethnologist Edward Curtis and the intense stories of a doomed Native American culture by Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, Tracks, etc.). I think of wagon trains, railroads, highways, and electricity, of tribal chiefs, administrators, surveyors, engineers, and clan rivalries . . .

Then, I get out of the shuttle bus and before I can follow a simple path to the hotel desk, I realize that things haven't changed as much as I just imagined. Immediately, pioneers, engineers, and clan leaders confront me—all wearing necklaces with the names of their clan and tribe inscribed on them. I hear drums and chanting.

The beginning of every audio show is charged with a grinning ear-to-ear sense of audio-industry renewal, but RMAF always takes that hopeful charge to its highest level. Everybody I know thinks RMAF is the best, most visitor-friendly, most exciting place, to experience the highest quality sounds that contemporary high-end audio has to offer. This is why so many manufacturers choose RMAF to introduce their latest creations.

This is why reviewers and stereo scribes sent their suits to the cleaners. This is why audiophiles abandoned their jobs and families to make arduous, hardship-filled pilgrimages to the Marriott Denver Tech Center. We are all here now, to experience the newest, most exotic, pathways to audio pleasure and musical enlightenment. Gentleman, light your high-fidelity campfires. Let the drum signals began!

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