BAASnotes.com – Bay Area Audiophile Society

THE Event for DIY Audio

See how the DIY crowd lives, meet accomplished designers (e.g., Nelson Pass, John Curl, S. Linkwitz) have fun!

Web site.

Bob

Fall Event for Vinyl Lovers

THE RECORD MAN, 1322 El Camino Real, Redwood City, Ca 94063

Web site.

Great Classical This Weekend!

Looking for something cool to do this Sunday (9/13/09)?

Click here for tickets to what promises to be a great event.

San Mateo Record Sale – May 16th and 17th!

Attend our Steve Hoffman show, and then buy some music:

Bob

Music players — I Mean Servers?

CES featured a new trend – music players that act like music servers. In particular, they can:

• Read music from a hard drive and play it;
• Play hi-rez disks directly (like Ref Recordings HRx); and
• Rip the music from CD to hard drive (in some cases)

A couple of these new machines were the rage at CES. Soundstage (among others) has the details here and here. (One of them even has tubes!) I think that PSaudio will sell a bunch of their product. They have the engineering budget to really do things right, and seem to have the vision as well.

One sobering note: of the four products that I saw in this category in Vegas, two were “down” for a period of time for software errors (“bugs”). It’s hell being on the bleeding edge….

In any case, this category will likely do well as a whole. Many audiophiles are turned off by the concept of a “computer in the music room.” Likewise, using a computer to rip/organize a massive music library is daunting. So the appeal of just inserting a disk and getting the sonic benefit of playback from a large memory buffer is substantial.

For me, I’ll take a Mac/1TB drive/Firewire any day!  <g>

bob walters

Burning Amp 2008 (Oct 19th)

For many of us, tweaking or building our gear is a key part of our musical expression.

We Bay Area folks are lucky to, through DIYaudio.com and others, be a mecca for this activity.

I highly recommend dropping by Burning Amp, the annual celebration of DIYaudio. Among other things, you can meet folks like Nelson Pass – a real treat!

See below for the link….

Bob

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Dear Bob,

Burning Amp is October 19th this year. Could you please alert your members?

Thanks,
Mark Cronander

“Desert Island” Discs

We all have our favorite disks – the ones that we pull out to elevate our mood or to test a new system. What are yours? Please share your top 5-10 disks or LP’s. Specify enough information so that our members can find them! Either reply to this post (you must register if you haven’t already) or email me. This should be fun. Thanks in advance!   – Bob

Belated Thanks to Cookie and Jason McGuire

A couple of weeks ago, we had a very successful event at the studio of Blue Coast Records in Belmont.

I think that each of us came away with a deeper understanding of the challenges and tradeoffs that recording engineers face in bringing the live event into our lives.

Our Chief Instructor was Cookie Marenco, a primo engineer and “emerging audiophile.” Assisting her was Jason McGuire, flemenco guitarist par excellence.

If you think that the goal of your playback system is “to reproduce the live event,” I guarantee that the “Blue Coast Sessions” would have give you perspective on the impossibility of that goal. Reproducing “what’s on the media” is a more reasonable standard.

So again our thanks to Cookie and Jason M – bravo!

As “Friends of BAAS,” I have added a link to each of their sites to our home page.

Note: Both sites have numerous music tracks and/or videos.

Person Jason McGuire

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Invite to THE Show in Denver in September

FROM “THE SHOW”:

If you are involved in Home Theater…….This is the place to be during September.

T.H.E. Show Denver is Sept 4 – 7 during CEDIA…….and we have large exhibit rooms still available. Society members can receive a 20% discount OVER our already low published rates on our website.

Audiophile Society Members are also invited to exhibit at T.H.E. Show Denver…..AT A 20% DISCOUNT.

Call us at (702) 242-4545 with questions or to reserve spaces.

Want to go to THE Show?

For the first time ever, BAAS members (and those of select other audiophile societies) will be invited to The Home Entertainment Show in Vegas during CES.

Specific dates are January 9-11.

Here’s what we know so far:

After a decade of being exclusively a Trade-Only convention,
T.H.E. Show Management and its Exhibitors have decided
it’s time to open the doors to all those who truly love and
appreciate High-End Audio.

As you probably know, T.H.E. Show occurs each January, and
this year we want to include YOU and YOUR MEMBERSHIP from
Noon on Friday the 9th, through the closing of T.H.E. Show on
Sunday, Jan 11th.

[ Thurs & Fri until noon will continue as Trade Only ]

T.H.E. Show annually touts over 200 exhibitors in over 100 active
display suites and recently expanded into both The St Tropez and
Alexis Park hotels, allowing the return of software/rare record & CD
exhibitors including Classic Records, The Music.com; Elusive Disc;
Reference Recordings; Acoustic Sounds; Cisco Music; Music Direct;
Straight Ahead Records; Discland and many more.

You will be seeing new equipment from around the globe, much
of it before its public release dates and many features will be aimed
directly at the Audiophile public:

• Discounted hotel accommodations
• Exclusive high-end oriented “guest speakers”
• Endless networking possibilities
• Participation in Demo Sale items on the final day
• Discounted tickets to many Cirque du Soleil presentations

And, much more…

See you there!

Head-Fi Meet on Sat, Jun 28th in San Mateo

If you haven’t been to a headphone get together, you’re missing something. They’re a hoot.

Head-fi.com, the very popular ‘phones web forum, is having their summer meeting in San Mateo.

Check it out!

Click here for details.

KEF Muon Speaker Demo in Bay Area

The $145K KEF Muon “uber-speakers” will be demonstrated at Audio High in Mountain View this week.

Times are 11AM-7PM Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Worth seeing/hearing IMO.

BTW, we’ll be having an event at Audio High in the near future….

Posting Comments on This Site

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Hello world! (New web site launched)

Welcome to the new BAAS website! Tune in frequently for updates on events, specials, equipment, etc.

You can now reach me directly at: bob at baasnotes.com Please contact me if you have any comments, suggestions, or other requests.

Note that you must register before posting comments on this site. Send an email request to me if you so desire.

Bob Walters