Newport THE Show 2014 Show Report overview

A tale of two hotels

The main hotel – the Hilton, with about 85 rooms

The ‘overflow’ hotel next door, with about 40 rooms

Who woulda thunk it? An upbeat high-end audio show.

Although this show is shrinking year to year, as are all the shows we attend and reputedly all the shows we hear about except Munich, the energy here is amazingly normal. About 30 to 40% women, a few kids, and no doom and gloom subtext. Not to minimize the real problems the industry has, but it is great to take a break from reality and just share our fascination with the high-end with other like-minded people, even if they aren’t audiophiles.

Show goers as often as not thanked the exhibitor… they had smiles on their faces, some of them… there were quite a few women, either unaccompanied or actively engaged, as opposed to often looking miserably bored by their significant other’s ridiculous hobby, like at other shows….

It was wonderfully refreshing, and not a little bit shocking.

Maybe having the auto show [about 12 to 15 very cool, very high-end cars] helped bring in the right kind of upbeat people. The cigars part of the show was just one table, and looked kind of lonely [see below for photo].

So, all you other show organizers, the bar has been set [a few years ago, in fact]. Try co-hosting with a car show, or a watch show, or wine-tasting, of whatever. Or try something else. Just try something.

And, as it is now hailing here on June 5 in Boulder, CO, it is nice that the weather didn’t suck at the show, either.

We need about one of these a month, in various places throughout the country. So, CAS, you’re next! 🙂

Although at least one person (ML) thought the overall QUALITY of sound was not up to the not-so-lofty bar set by RMAF, After pondering for awhile I think I disagree, and that they are quite similar in the overall, approximate percentage of great rooms and the number of good rooms and the number of OK rooms. CES still tops the list in my view of the shows with the best sound.

We posted about 450 photos from the show on our instagram page [best viewed from your desktop computer or your instragram app], and in our facebook instragram tab. We posted photos, instantly, in real time, of all the rooms we saw [I think we missed only two at the entire show]. Also some photos of the exotic cars and atmosphere. We’ll work on the photographic quality for the next show, now that we know this works, but at least you get to see what was there and what it was like.

We are going to post here, on this blog, high-res photos and a few notes about a few rooms that we liked or thought were interesting. No best of shows, just ‘what happened at this show’s. These will be posted in the order that I visited them with the big camera.

Enjoy!