[spending way too much time over at Mattters. Who knew I had a thing for Cats and I already knew I loved Indian Food and High End Audio of course. Anyway, a great time waster… [aka information resource] …]

Anyway, we have decided that Audio Fed needs a kick in the pants - so we making a big push to sell our demo gear [No price too low! But seriously, make an offer, we will be nice. We promise] and reposition the store as one of the leading establishments in the world [which it already is in many ways] and to do that we need to make some exciting changes.

No, I can’t tell you what they are : … Neli will kill me if I post them.

But we need to sell some of this great gear we have sitting here before we do anything - so if you have had an eye on something - but thought you should wait… well, now you should NOT wait because these kinds of opportunities only come once or twice.

Hey, so we’re impatient. What’s new? There are things we need to buy, and before that happens we need to sell some things.

So that makes us…. what do they call it… motivated sellers

There are several websites that list used equipment for sale. Here is a new website that makes a list of equipment, in this case McIntosh, that is for sale on Ebay:

http://www.mcintoshstereoamplifiers.com

I am curious how much people use sites like this. We thought of doing one, even of making it a page in the magazine each month, one that would display components for sale for all brands of equipment.

But then we thought that nobody would be all that interested in yet another classifieds page - and it would likely antagonize all the other sites that do this: Audio Asylum, AudioXSell, Audiogon, etc…. especially if we screen scraped them like Oodle does

You also got:

# eCoustics.com.
# Audio Video Marketplace
# Audio Shopper
# Avmarket
# Canuck Audio Mart
# HiFi Classifieds
# HigherFi

and every forum and forum wannabe has associated classifieds ads it seems.

Everyone wants to unseat Audiogon - but no one has made much headway as far as I can tell.

One of the things I like doing the most is helping promote the hobby. I especially enjoy helping smaller manufacturers - in particular those that make less expensive but good sounding equipment for the money - get attention from the audiophile community [one of my favorite things about the show reports].

We have been offering people the opportunity to publish their press releases, for free, for the last few weeks - but press releases are hard to come up with, especially if you, like me, cannot tell the difference between press releases and advertising. Many people do not want to offend us sending us a advertisement when we asked for press releases only.

So we are going to fix that.

And, as we all know, the economy sucks [unless you are a bank, insurance company, or wall-street firm - or lobbyist or news channel for the same].

Now that the magazine is [almost ] usable we could go out and pound the pavement signing up advertisers just like all those other rags. But then we would just get the same ole same ole advertisers who can afford to pay for advertising and the other 98% of the industry would be left out of the party.

Well, that kind of small potatoes party is just not what Spintricity, who brings you 3000+ photo / 2200 page show reports, had in mind. We want 1000s of of brands to be able to present their products, services and story. Well, we want a lot anyway.

To that end, dear reader, we are trying to get everybody in our high-end audio wonderland to pony up one FULL-PAGE ad, which we will publish for free in each issue of Spintricity.

In this way we want to turn each issue of Spintricity into a show report-like cornucopia, a bonanza, a sh*t load if you will, of equipment, and information and photos about equipment - in addition to articles on the lives, times, and adventures in audiophiledom.

For those companies that can afford to do more, we will offer the ability to purchase additional pages, to purchase attention getters for their ads, and to purchase special ‘live webpage’ ads.

To assist with ads, you manufacturers who cannot afford to hire a graphics design firm, and don’t want to go completely bald [yes, you women too] trying to learn photoshop, you can select a photo from one of our show reports [or send us one of yours], send us some (small amount please!) text and we will make an ad for you.

This will be the policy for Spintricity for the forseeable future, and forever if things work out as we expect.

——————————

One last thing. A show report is coming right up. You know it. We know it. [Oh boy do we know it].

OK, yes, that would be RMAF 2009 [that is Rocky Mountain Audio Fest you search engine, you].

We create a separate, linkable article for each room at the show. In the article is several pages of photos. In amongst those photos we will run industry ads, for free, for products in that room. This will allow visitors to show report pages for the room to see tech spec sheets, ads, backgrounders, other products from the same brand, whatever.

This allows you, the reader, to see lots more (accurate and appealing) information about the equipment displayed in the room.

We will run 1 fullpage ad/spec sheet/whatever for each brand listed on the sign of the room. Exhibitors can purchase additional pages.

For those who can’t exhibit at the show - we will run your ad in the show report as per a normal issue. Not sure where we will put these if your equipment is not on display, but we’ll figure something out.

[I know I am talking to two different audiences in this post, the industry and audiophiles - and I am switching back and forth faster than a switching power supply - but, well, sorry about that].

Many in the industry read this blog - and we will be sending out emails to the others. But who reads emails [about 20%]? So you audiophiles need to coerce your favorite manufacturers to come up with an ad to publish in Spintricity. Remember: FULL-PAGE [any format] and lots of juicy take-no-prisoners graphics.

Enjoy!

Email ad submissions to: industry@spintricity.com

Can hardly see the city today, or even more than a few 100 yards, because of all the smoke.

You can see from the satellite map how the smoke from the fires is blowing here [Boulder, Colorado] from California

It seemed like such a long distance. But it apparently is not. You can even smell the smoke. We are located at the right tip of the smoke stream.

[A post on the linkedIn board was by a student who is performing a survey - you might find it interesting]

Survey for my academic research on audiophile market - please share your opinion by replying the questions.

Hello,
I am an audiophile and an MBA student who is writing his dissertation project on the audiophile equipment market. It is a non-commercial academic research project (not sponsored by any company) aimed to analyse the market and its main trends, and to convey the views of the real customers to the companies in the market.
Here I ask all fellow audiophiles to spend some of their time to fill out my survey. Here is the link:

LINK

It is hopefully going to be helpful not only to the companies but to all people in our hobby. This market is under-researched, and companies at times may become quite delusional about the target customers, their views and needs. Please ask your audiophile friends to complete this survey too.
I decided to offer a prize of 100 pounds or $200, paid via PayPal, to stimulate the participants (provided they give some means of communicating with them in the survey). I will randomly determine the winner on 20th Sept. 2009. The personal info will remain private and will not be used anywhere again.

[After some criticisms - aren’t audiophiles the friendliest people? - he posted further comments about his survey]

Thank you for your comments, and especially for filling in the lengthy survey, which I must admit may be a bit confusing.
I am not a professional researcher, in fact this is my first ‘research’ in the last 12 years, and even back then it was based on experimental observations rather than surveys. I accept all criticisms, some questions may be biased somehow towards the research focus.
Also, Sony and Phillips were picked just as examples of mass market companies in this project, which is not commercial and not sponsored by any company. However, I am interested to find out why the big companies that were present in this market before (for example Sony ES or Pioneer Elite series) and were making equipment that was often competitive (and would stay in Stereophile Recommended Components for years), abandoned this market. I am wondering if this decision actually contributed to eroding differentiation in their mass market product lines, which in turn contributed to the increasing commoditization of consumer electronics market. Some companies even abandoned the traditional mass market in favour of less commoditized market segments with lower competitive pressure (Kenwood moving to marine and car media products, for example).
I can’t help but wonder, given their R&D abilities, powerful supply chains and enormous production facilities, why wouldn’t they (big companies) come up with something like (just as example) the battery-powered amps Red Wine Audio is selling at $3k, making it 6-channel and priced under $1k. I am not suggesting that they come and kill all speicialized companies (which will never happen), but for goodness sake, the whole market exists because the big guys are making really bad sounding equipment. So probably they are lacking some critical competences to be competitive in this respect, the reason hiding in the organizational culture, anti-economies of scale, their strategy formulation, etc.
As for the higher end of high end. The majority of components sold in the market are in the medium range of $1800-5000 per component, and bringing into the survey ultra high-end (like Avantgarde Acoustic, MBL, etc.) selling in very limited quantities, would only unnecessarily lengthen the survey, as they do not statistically represent the market. Turntables and iPods… I wonder just how representative are those… As for the iPod, I know a good deal of audiophiles in a number of countries, and dare I say, only three of them own the device, and would not even connect it to their main systems. I have multiterabyte media archives, and space is still always short - why would I even connect a 8 to 32Gb device to my system? It is inferior in every respect to a good music server, be it a custom built computer, or a good hdd/network media device. I can’t imagine a good reason to even want an iPod unless I walk a lot or ride a bus regularly. Some of the audiophiles I know own turntables (not a big fraction though), but the major part of their music collection are CDs. I know only very few die-hard vinyl fans, who would not listen to a good digital source. Of course, I understand that personal experience is not a sound base for scientific judgement, but it can at least provide some hints.
In this survey for obvious reasons I have to use non-probability sampling, which is not a good thing research-wise. If I offset it even further by including variables which are not very representative of the population, stretching the distribution extremes - nothing meaningful will come out.

Salon Son & Image, the unique consumer electronics show in Canada is moving.

August, 2009 – The Montreal based SSI are very excited to welcome you March 25, 26, 27 and 28, 2010 to our new location at the Hilton Montreal Bonaventure. A beautiful exterior garden surrounds a unique penthouse-style hotel having guest rooms all on the same floor, allowing our visitors to easily find their way while eliminating wasted time in elevators. The rooms, with windows that open to the outside, will certainly be more comfortable to exhibitors and visitors alike. Their contemporary design facilitates a luxurious décor, and their size is perfect for listening rooms. Moreover, the fact that they have reinforced concrete walls ensures a sound quality that was noticeably absent in recent years.

The long corridors of the Bonaventure Hilton allow us to distribute exhibitor rooms over a greater area in an intelligent way. This will virtually eliminate noise travel between neighbouring suites when the doors of the rooms remain open to ensure a smooth flow of traffic.

The large halls are all on a single floor just below that of the rooms, greatly simplifying the comings and goings of visitors. This also allows them to conveniently visit their favourite exhibitors more than once.

The layout allows each room and each hall to be a prime location. Visitors will save significant time moving around, without missing a single exhibitor.

Another very important improvement is that the receiving and shipping of goods will now happen indoors. Cold weather and lack of space will be a thing of the past, thanks to the huge loading dock inside Place Bonaventure.

And a piece of good news - as the SSI dates overlap those of the 150,000-visitor National Home Show which will be taking place at Place Bonaventure, we can take advantage of this traffic to attract new visitors.

Such an investment on our part during an uncertain economic situation is further proof of our comprehensive dedication to the promotion of the audio-video industry in Quebec and in Canada.

For more information please contact : Sarah Tremblay, Director Salon Son & Image, 2054 De Salaberry, St-Bruno, Qc J3V 4N6, Ph : 450-441-5989, Cell : 514-267-6231 stremblay@salonsonimage.com ; www.salonsonimage.com

We are on Twitter at:

http://twitter.com/spintricity

This will allow us to keep people up to date about Spintricity more frequently than here on the blog - and it will be more broadly focused as well.

We are also on FaceBook at:

Spintricity’s Group on FaceBook

We also have a Page over there - but the FaceBook software is so buggy, it is still kind of mucked up. Eventually we should be able to have each Spintricity article appear over there simultaneously [more or less] with its publication in the magazine.

Spintricity’s Page on FaceBook

We were wondering if people were interested in having us Twitter the events and impressions of various shootouts here at Audio Federation.

For those of you who have a real life, Twitter is a very popular place to post comments and everyone has something somewhere between a Blog and a Chat Room, into which to post lots of very short messages.

The idea would be for us to post play-by-play about what is playing, what cables are being listened to, what peoples impressions are, and try to answer people’s questions during the shootout.

Anyway, just wanted to see if there was any interest. If there is not, that’s OK as it does take some amount of effort on our part - but if there is lots of interest, then it could be fun and you all out there might have some really good questions and ideas that will help the shootout be more effective at defining the differences between various components and cables.

“We are pleased to announce the release of a line-stage preamplifier model LL2.1 which is a direct replacement for the LL2 preamplifier.

The LL2.1 features the following upgrades and modifications as compared to the LL2:

· addition of a built-in remote on/off for LAMM amplifiers

· introduction of the attenuation for gain reduction by 15 dB

· some new parts

· new knobs

· slight changes in schematic diagram

Here are the links to specs and description.

US retail price is $5,990 (deluxe version); $5,690 (regular)

This preamp is in production and available immediately.”

[We will have more about LSAF 2009 as we learn more]

“We are pleased to let you know that the Lone Star Audio Fest is on for 2009.

There has been a need of a common place for fellow audio enthusiast to meet in our region. And Dallas seemed like the logical place that is central to several surrounding states and cities for us to come together. Therefore, LSAF was born with the hope of bringing our closely knit community together. LSAF 2009 is the third annual meeting, with the hope to expand attendance and continue our festival into future years.

Lone Star Audio Fest has grown from a grass roots effort to bring fellow enthusiast together in the pursuit of enjoying our common passion for music through audio playback equipment.

LSAF will be held in Dallas, TX at the Embassy Suites Dallas Park Central on June 19-21, 2009.

This Embassy Suite in the North East region of Dallas has recently gone through a massive renovation which offers a quality setting for LSAF 2009.

Here is a link to the hotel for further details: http://www.esdallasparkcentral.hotel-brochure.com/

There is no registration cost for exhibitors, and no admission price for attendees as usual. We believe that this low cost structure allows many more the opportunity to attend and exhibit at our festival. Your relationship is entirely between you and the hotel. We are all agreeing to meet there as attendees and exhibitors of the LSAF, and by booking as a group we are able to get a better room rate ($99 per night vs. the regular rate of $139). So be sure to let them know you are attending the LSAF event. To make reservations by phone call 972-234-3300 and tell them you are coming to the Lone Star Audio Fest. Or, go to http://embassysuites.hilton.com/en/es/groups/personalized/DALTXES-LSA-20090616/index.jhtml to register online.

Please email Shane Moore at shanemmail-lsaf@yahoo.com or info@lonestaraudiofest if you will be attending and would like to have your name/logo added to the list of exhibitors on the LSAF webpage(http://www.lonestaraudiofest.com/). Also, please email Shane after you book your room as well, so he can keep a head count.

If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

We in the LSAF steering committee have volunteered our time in an effort to make this festival a possibility. But, we know that your participation is what will make LSAF a success. It is the fellow enthusiasts that make this audio festival what it is.

And we are all looking forward to seeing everyone there!!!!

Many thanks from the LSAF steering committee:

Shane Moore, Paul Hileman, Norris Wilson