Music can be a semi-religious experience, but this is ridiculous.
I'd come to the Netherlands to cover the Dutch Audio Event, a show that has grown to be one of continental Europe's largest hi-fi fests. On the way from the Amsterdam airport, I stopped over in Utrecht, where, for a future column, I visited Museum Speelklok, whose collection of mechanical musical instruments fills the medieval Buurkerk. Coincidentally, I stayed at Hotel Karel V, once home to the Teutonic Order, a Catholic brotherhood of knights and priests.
Then I arrived at the Dutch Audio Event in Veldhoven in the southern Netherlands, 90 minutes away by train and bus. Its venue is the conference center Koningshof, once a convent and boarding school. Some 150 Catholic nuns lived here during its 1950s heyday; the last departed in 1979. As I write this, it's day one of the two-day hi-fi show, and thousands of audiophiles from at least half a dozen countries have descended on the low-slung, sprawling building to worship something other than plaster saints.
And the coincidence isn't over. After the show, I'll stay in the region for a few days, because I have meetings at three nearby Dutch high-end companies. My hotel? Of course it would be a former Augustinian monastery in Eindhoven called Mariënhage, dating to the 15th century.
Four religious buildings on one audio-related trip, none chosen for their ecclesiastical history. It all fits fine, in a way. Audiophiles too have their rituals, articles of faith, sacred cows, and heretics. Some spend the price of a golden calf pursuing transcendence.
Whatever the spiritual rewards, the Dutch Audio Event has been enjoying solid worldly success. The show took its present name in 2021, when the organizers of an earlier event, X-Fi, joined forces with the people behind the Dutch audio website HiFi.nl. The first edition didn't fill every available room, but five years later, all the demonstration spaces are booked, and two dozen prospective exhibitors have had to join a waiting list.
This year, the show has expanded into the 12,000ft2 Kempenzaal, where almost 20 exhibitors display their wares. The cacophonous space is not conducive to focused listening—at all—but organizer and co-owner Aart van der Giezen sees it as a solution to the show's growing pains. Proper listening rooms are ideal for demonstrations, but a stand in a busy exhibition hall can expose a manufacturer to more visitors, he says. Some companies have booked both.
Unlike AXPONA, where exhibitors frequently convert hotel bedrooms into listening rooms, the Dutch Audio Event uses Koningshof's conference facilities. The complex has an abundance of meeting rooms, many regularly used by ASML, the Dutch semiconductor-equipment giant whose headquarters are just a few miles away. Everything is under one roof, and largely on the ground floor.
According to Van der Giezen, this year's show features more than 375 brands represented by nearly 100 exhibitors. Based on advance ticket sales and past experience, he estimates that about 8000 visitors will stream through the doors over the weekend, many traveling from Belgium, Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe.
Van der Giezen is considering putting on a second annual show, this one in the western Netherlands, the country's population center. The idea is to reach Holland-based audiophiles who regard Veldhoven as too far from home. (The Dutch have a peculiar sense of distance. Americans will drive two hours to meet up for lunch. In the Netherlands, two hours is practically emigration.)
For now, Koningshof is bursting at the seams. High-end audio may be a niche pursuit, but apparently it's a niche that requires lots of floor space.
