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Denver’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) has canceled its 2020 show.

There is no need for Denver's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest to toot its own horn. The three-day affair, which opens at noon on Friday, October 12 in the Denver Marriott Tech Center, promises no less than 431 exhibitors; 174 exhibitor rooms, including 24 large ones (same since 2009): 41 miscellaneous vendors; 35 CANJAM vendors; and an impressive number of show debuts.

The largest US high-end audio show open to the public is also, despite its size and occasionally snow-encrusted environs, the warmest and friendliest audiophile show in the country. For this we owe thanks to Marjorie Baumert, who continues to nurture and sustain the show following the death of her show co-founder and husband, Al Stiefel, at the start of 2009; the exceptional staff at the comfortable Marriott; a dedicated cadre of volunteers drawn from the Colorado Audio Society and Marjorie's extended circle of friends and family; and exhibitors who, welcoming the relative peace and quiet of the location, approach the show as if reuniting with old friends.

Montreal audiophiles are a hardy lot. Last winter, the city experienced the most devastating ice storm in its history, with power lines demaged to the point that almost the entire city was plunged in darkness. At the time of the 1998 Festival du Son et de l'Image (aka the Montreal Audio/Video Show), residents were still recovering from the effects of the storm. Did this calamity stop the show? No way! By all accounts, the 1998 show was the most successful in the event's 11-year history. I missed it myself, but I made sure that I wouldn't miss the next one.

Earlier this year I pried myself from my upstate-New York home long enough to visit Robert Lighton Audio: a beautifully decorated suite on the 12th floor of 37 West 20th Street in Manhattan's Chelsea district, in which an Audio Note Ongaku amplifier shares space with a Suzanne Guiguichon armoire, and from which the view of the Empire State Building is stunning.

We were saddened to learn (via the">http://boingboing.net/">the website Boing-boing) that Dr. Robert A. Moog, inventor of the world's first real-time reconfigurable music synthesizer, is being treated for a brain tumor (glioblastoma multiforme or GBM), for which he is receiving radiation treatment and chemotherapy.

Just in time for the New Year, Audio High has released a new set of 23 of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas, performed live by Robert Silverman and available in MQA, hi-rez, CD-quality, and MP3 formats. If the prospect of one of Canada's most feted pianists offering his mature thoughts on Beethoven in superb sound is not, in and of itself, sufficient reason to tempt you, the fact that the MP3 files can be obtained for free, with the others available for a donation to the Silver Linings non-profit charity, certainly will be.

Cleveland's WMMS-FM built an enormous following of loyal fans by cranking out a steady stream of rock'n'roll---a stream now 30 years old. "The Buzzard," as the station at 100.7MHz is known, rode the wave of rock's ascendancy, and pioneered the classic rock format---one instantly recognizable by the heavy rotation of the recordings of such groups as Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, the Allman Brothers, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, the Cars, Kansas, Boston, and Journey. Every major city in the United States has at least one such station. Throughout the '70s, '80s, and '90s, WMMS won generations of rock fans with its midday concerts and kept them tuned in with its unwavering dedication to heavy rock. The station was instrumental in winning the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for the city of Cleveland.