TAVES 2012

Last year's TAVES involved a partnership of Suave Kajko and Simon Au, both from the Toronto area, as well as Michel Plante and Sarah Tremblay, organizers of the well-established Montreal Salon Son & Image (SSI). Michel and Sarah also brought with them most of their staff from SSI. Suave and Simon were new to "show" business, so when it was announced that Michel and Sarah were not going to be involved in this year's show, there was some concern. Would these Torontonians have the élan, the savoir faire, the je ne sais quoi needed to run a show like TAVES.

Mais oui! It was a great show! I talked to a good many attendees and exhibitors, and they were all very happy about the range of products on display and the way the show was run. One highly experienced member of the industry told me that this was the most-smoothly-run show that he has been part of.

In planning TAVES 2012, Suave and Simon wanted to extend the range of the show, so that it was more "consumer electronics" rather than just "hi-fi." In this, they had only limited success. The much touted "State of the Art Home Theater System," featuring a pro-level projector and special screen optimized for 3-D ran into a major problem when it was discovered that the hotel did not allow bringing in a screen; they'd have to use the hotel's built-in screen—suitable for business meeting, not high-end home theater. So . . . no state-of-the-art home-theater demo. None of the exhibitors had anything more in the way of video than a mid-sized plasma or LCD display. An interesting seminar on TV/projector calibration by Michael Osadciew, a local THX/ISF professional video calibrator, was sparsely attended when I was there.

So while show organizers might prefer it otherwise, both the Toronto and Montreal shows appeal to the same sort of people that form Stereophile's core readership: people interested in the highest quality reproduction of music. If that's you, then you likely would have had a great time at TAVES 2012. I know I did!