Michael Fremer at Pacific Audio Fest – Part 2: The Rooms

Here’s the second helping of TrackingAngle’s Pacific AudioFest coverage. We went more to support the show and out of curiosity to see how a first effort would be received by the industry and consumers alike.  As it turned out both the audio industry and consumers supported it and both turned out in impressive numbers. The show was short on turntables with many brands not present and in that sense it was disappointing.

Also for the first time in many years record retailers, new and/or used were absent. Todd Garfinkle’s M A Recordings was there selling his LPs cut from high resolution digital files (which is how he records them, using a pair of microphones) and that was about it other than a Chinese label selling a few records. Let’s hope there’s more analog action next year.

Another observation: the musical choices ranged mostly from the usual mundane audiophile stuff you’ve heard way too many times to “Whatever that is I never want to hear it again”.  But as our M. Lui proved in the Olson’s Hi-Fi room, you can play for audio enthusiasts new and interesting music they’ve never before heard and they will respond. He played Dean Blunt, Spiritualized and a few other things that everyone in the room dug, in part because he got up and first talked about them. Next year I hope we’ll hear more adventurous musical choices!