Audio Federation

February 4, 2009 by Michael

Al Stiefel Leaves Us

Al, perhaps best known, along with his wife Marjorie, as the organizer and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, as well being co-partner of Red Rock Audio, left us all to go to that perhaps bigger and hopefully less stressful high-end audio show in the sky.

Al was our friend [who we loved], a supporter of Audio Federation, a supporter of local high-end audio manufacturers, dealers, and audiophiles both here in Colorado, nationally, and world-wide.

A lot of people support these things in spirit, but few [none] throw so much [all] of their energy and time and sweat into it.

There is really no one else [coming even close to] doing what Al did for all of us audiophiles. Just the way he actually cared for and about the success of each and every exhibitor – both at the show and the whole year ’round – is uniquely ‘Al’.

He will be missed and missed and missed…

[RMAF 2009 will, like always, be next October, with organization by Marjorie, and support by Joe Reynolds (Nordost), Ray Kimber and Roy Gregory (HiFi+)]

February 4, 2009 by Michael

CES 2009 report has already exceeded 1500 photos…

… so I guess my previous estimates of the entire report having 1500 photos were…. low.

I think the source of my failure to guestimate correctly lies in the fact that with a better camera – more of the photos came out lookin’ good.

Also the new format makes show casing each room, as well as we possibly can, more useful, as we will be able to find the room again someday [and the search engines will be able to find them too]. We will actually try to go back through the show report, and tag each piece of equipment for what it is – so that the show report will become sort of the be-all-and-end-all of current high-end audio equipment information. Yes, we are hoping exhibitors will post more information in the comments section as well, along with comments by other people who were there, and questions by those who weren’t [or, knowing the net as we all do, visa-versa].

Remember for posts in the forums: Politeness is Correct – you can say more or less what you want, but be polite about it.

Yes, I know the show report is still only about 40% done [here I go guestimating again] and everybody is kind of holding their breath to see just what can [will] happen. We do think that maybe putting T.H.E. Show’s show report into the next issue – along with a backlog of articles that are piling up.