Jason Victor Serinus

It’s Thursday afternoon, and all is aflutter in the show office in the Denver Marriott Tech Center. Everyone and their mother is arriving at once, and Show Manager Marjorie Baumert heads to the computer as she and her invaluable staff of volunteers move as fast as they can to meet the needs of multiple hundreds of exhibitors.

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.

Naxos stands poised to release its first 24-bit/96 kHz high-definition audio download. On October 2, one of the label's most important orchestral recordings for the fall quarter, conductor, arranger and composer Peter Breiner's new orchestrations of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Songs and Dances of Death, and The Nursery, will become available, not as a physical CD, but rather as high-resolution and MP3 downloads. Expect the link to appear on iTrax, eclassical, classicsonline, HDTracks, hiresaudio.com, theclassicalshop, and Ariama, with Linn and Onkyo coming on board soon thereafter.

The Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show (TAVES) launches its second annual three-day show on September 28 in downtown Toronto's historic King Edward Hotel. Produced by Canada HiFi's publisher/editor-in-chief, Suave Kajko, and his partner, Simon Au, and "presented by Porsche," TAVES promises multiple exhibit rooms in which between 65 and 70 exhibitors, over 80% of whom are manufacturers, will display approximately 274 component brands and media from 26 recording labels (CD, LP, and Blu-ray).

"I'm pretty excited about the preponderance of manufacturers, because they tend to have more elaborate set-ups and bring a lot more product with them," Kajko told Stereophile.

It was an audio demo quite unlike most others. Less than two weeks after the debut, at CEDIA 2012 in Indianapolis, of Steinway Lyngdorf's Model LS Concert two-way floor-standing dipole line-source loudspeaker/sound system, the LS Concert joined two other complete Steinway Lyngdorf systems for a "very first" quasi-public unveiling in San Francisco. Jointly staged on two floors of a Pacific Heights mansion, the event was hosted by several entities—Steinway Lyngdorf, a collaboration between piano maker Steinway & Sons and legendary audio innovator Peter Lyngdorf; Sherman Clay, the largest Steinway dealer in the United States; Engineered Environments, a residential systems design and installation firm that specializes in customized technological "solutions," including home entertainment systems, for a "discerning clientele"; and the Luxury Marketing Council of San Francisco. Hence the RSVP and "business attire" required, valet parking, catered event targeted, not audiophiles, but instead a select group of home builders, architects, custom installers, real estate brokers, and venture capitalists.

You can interpret the title of this blog in many ways. Speaking personally as a Bay Area resident, it means coming into the home stretch of the California Audio Show knowing that there are a host of dealers, distributors, and manufacturers in Northern California who are in love with music and dedicated to high quality music reproduction. It also means, in the literal sense, that CAS 3 included a number of systems that got to the heart of music reproduction.

One of those was Bob Hodas' room. Shown in part with recording, mixing, and mastering engineer Piper Payne. . .

I beg your indulgence. CAS 2012 gave Northern Californians their first opportunity to hear Wilson Audio's imposing Alexandria XLF loudspeaker ($199,500/pair). The latest and grandest statement of Dave Wilson's engineering acumen—he designed the crossover and supervised the voicing, for starters—the 97dB-sensitive Alexandria XLF powered by the 600W VTL Siegfried Series II Reference monoblocks ($65,000/pair), together with the not-really-necessary but it sure makes its mark in such a large room Wilson Audio Thor's Hammer subwoofer ($21,500) and a front end whose cutting-edge technology and pocket-cutting pricing could make many a grown woman and man weep, produced some of the most stunning sound I have ever heard at an audio show.