San Francisco---<A HREF="http://www.vacuumtube.com/home.html"><I>Vacuum Tube Valley</I></A>'s tube and antique audio show here last week drew dozens of exhibitors and hundreds of attendees to the Airport Clarion Hotel over the Feb. 6-7 weekend. The heavy rains that caused mudslides in some Northern California communities, combined with high tides that flooded some freeways, kept attendance down. The show's turnout was "about half of what we expected," said <I>VTV</I> publisher/editor Charlie Kittleson.

What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:

What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:

What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:

What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:

What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:

What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:

What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:

What's in a name? One of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons (footnote 1) shows a meeting of a loudspeaker manufacturer's marketing people, trying to come up with a name for the company's latest product:

<I>Audio designers may differ in their specific design approaches, but the best of them have in common a real passion for their craft. I certainly found this when I visited the Hales Design Group factory in Huntington Beach, California. Although still in his early 30s, Paul Hales has been involved in the design and manufacture of high-quality loudspeakers for almost a decade&mdash;first with the Hales Audio partnership, then with his own company, Hales Design Group. When he was just 23, an age when most people are still trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives, Paul had a speaker company and a speaker, the System Two Signature, that got a rave review in </I>Stereophile<I> (Vol.13 No.9, September 1990). Naturally, my first question was about beginnings...</I>