News

Bethesda, MD retailer JS Audio (4919 St. Elmo Avenue) is having an open house Saturday November 22, 12pm–4pm to debut the new Audio Research Galileo Series amplifier and preamplifier with the Wilson Audio Alexandria XLF loudspeakers!

Wednesday & Thursday, November 12&150;13, 5:30–9pm: North Carolina Dealer Audio Advice will host two consecutive Music Matters events, with special guest Michael Fremer of Stereophile magazine and AnalogPlanet.com. The Wednesday evening event will take place at Audio Advice's Raleigh location (8621 Glenwood Avenue), while the Thursday night event will be held at the dealer's Pineville showroom in Charlotte (11409 Carolina Place Parkway, near Carolina Place Mall). Several manufacturer representatives, including Dave Gordon (Audio Research), Alex Brinkman (Ayre Acoustics), and Jett Logan (AudioQuest), will be on hand to provide demonstrations and answer questions. Food and drink will be served. For more info, visit www.audioadvice.com or call (919) 881-2005 (Raleigh) or (704) 821-4510 (Pineville). RSVP, including the evening you'll attend and number of people in your party: event@audioadvice.com.

The founder and until recently the long-term editor of The Absolute Sound, Harry Pearson (left above), has passed away. His protege Michael Fremer (right above) offers an appreciation here and Robert J. Reina, a long-term friend, is writing his own rememberance of HP in the February 2015 issue of Stereophile. (The January issue has already gone to press.)

Virginia retailer Command Performance A/V—115 Park Ave. Suite #2, Falls Church—is having a Grand Opening on Saturday November 8 from 11am to 5pm. The day will feature Constellation Audio's new Inspiration Series (above), presented by Irv Gross, Director of Sales for Constellation Audio.

New location, new features, and a more inclusive, consumer electronics-orientated approach: that's the word on the fourth annual Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show (TAVES). Now ensconced in the Sheraton Centre Hotel in downtown Toronto, which offers far more large exhibit rooms than did TAVES' former venue, the three-day show opens on Friday, October 31 with four floors' worth of audio, video and consumer electronics-oriented exhibits.

The big news—the really big news at RMAF—was the "before winter" US launch of five-year old Tidal of Oslo's full CD-quality, (lossless 1411kbps) music streaming service. Demonstrated in a fine sounding room with Electrocompaniet equipment, the sound was convincingly good when we cued up a track from pianist Leif Ove Andsnes' recording of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto. (More on the sound in another blog, where Hegel was using Tidal's service to source music for their room.)

Could it only be the 11th time the annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest has welcomed thousands of audiophiles to Denver? The three-day gathering, which takes place Friday, October 10–Sunday, October 12 at its comfortable location, the Marriott Denver Tech Center, has become such an essential part of the international audio scene that it feels like it's been here forever.