Well, CEDIA is right around the corner - both physically and time-wise, it being next Thursday - Sunday.

Got my $50(!) tickets - well, I paid for them several weeks ago and I am getting their SPAM machine emails - so I think that means it is a go.

Planning of taking lots of photos, and putting them up on this ole website, along with commentary.

But not expecting much in the way of quality sound at the main conference - but perhaps at T.H.E. SHOW next door?

We’ll see…..

[or butler, we are a equal opportunity exploiter]

Sung to the tune of ‘If I only had a brain’ from the Wizard of OZ - one of my mostest favorite songs

If we only had a maid,
We’d wile away the hours,
Relaxin’ with our feet up,
As they carried the [4 speaker, 150-250lb] Supremes.

Up and down the stairs,
They’d move the equipment,
And, why not, cable it up too,
While we laid around and snoozed.

And when the FedEx arrives,
and heavy packages do appear,
We can sigh and pop in a CD,
As they 45 steps do the lugging,
And we open another beer.

If we only had a maid,
cabling would be such a cinch,
this way, that way, and back again,
and changing the equipment,
would be no a sweating,
If we only had a maid.

A dusting and a vacuuming,
Around the delicate equipment,
would be no problem for our maid,
So no sneezing and no fingerprints,
will distract us from our music,
If we only had a maid.

And the CDs and LPs,
would all be so clean,
So organized and alphabetical,
If we only had a maid.

And when a lightning comes a striking,
They assure equipment is unplugged,
And when the storm leaves just five minutes later,
The equipment they would quickly power back up,
If we only had a maid.

————————-

Needs work…

And we do have a maid. For the husband they are often called a ‘wife’. And for the wife’ they are a ‘husband’. ?

Took us long enough, huh?

Well, we had an excuse, with the huge horn speakers hogging all the space up until May.

Then Neli’s sorry excuse for a husband was under orders not to lift anything heavier than 25 - 35 lbs. for 6 weeks - which we determined actually did rule out 300 lb bass towers.

And then we had audition after audition - and everyone really loved the Audio Note Ongaku on the Kharma Mini Exquisites with the Jorma Prime cable. - so we were hesitant messing with perfecttion [but this system will be downstairs, so we’ll see how much the size of the room contributed to the sound - it IS a small system, after all]

We had some concern - and numerous, numerous, numerous to the point of ridiculousness - discussions about how to get the speakers up to the main room. How to wrap them, ho wmany layers, how dirty the blankets could be, using a hand-truck, going outside instead of up the stairs, I was about to die with all this talking - what is WRONG with me that I was the one who started the conversation half the time?

Here is the stairs we carried them up. Neli did great carrying the top of the speaker up, and we did take off the 40lb or so spiked feet - but otherwise we ‘just did it’, like Nike keeps telling us to do, though at least with the second bass tower, we wrapped the banister with towels to prevent any ‘accidents’ - which luckily we didn'’t have (whew! and yippee!).

We put the EDGE Reference amps on the main towers (800 watts on top, and the built in 2000 watts on the bottom - these boys go LOUD - so far I haven’t turned it up above -32 on the Capitole CD player - which is already over 100dB). Well, we wanted to wake up the speakers and this should do it.

Positioning still sucks.

And now starts the long journey to finding the magical combo of components that will make these speakers sing the way we know they can. This currently ain’t it, not the least reason of which is that the Capitole player needs vibration control bad - there is some serious BASS going on and it is just sitting on the Black Diamond Racing cones, right there next to the speakers, poor thing.