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When it comes to what music to bring, there are a few considerations. Manufacturers aren't there to entertain us. They're there to do business. Whilst this does include appealing to the press and securing future reviews, most if not all of that can be handled by email. Playing music that is certain to drive people out of the room or deliberately makes most systems sound like crap is bad form. So are excessively long tracks which test the patience of those not keen on our choices. Suffering through someone else's 4-minute cut to have a chance at getting one's own played isn't too much to ask. Having to sit through something twice that length or longer becomes questionable.


Then there's the matter of why. What are one's own choices to accomplish? Show off what a system can do? Or be a rare opportunity to hear one's favourite tunes over an über system well beyond one's own? Selecting tracks with decent recorded dynamic range—above 15dB to avoid badly compressed Pop which essentially redlines—is one good qualifier. I use PureMusic's meter to check on that.


Because I was a classically trained clarinetist with symphonic and chamber music experience, I need acoustic rather than amplified instruments to judge timbre. Small-scale classical is perfect but long symphonic movements are out (and fading out half-way through is barbaric). Hence I grabbed a short 2:15 Baroque interlude and one 4:05 Klezmer Dance featuring Martin Frost on clarinet against symphony orchestra. Well-recorded piano is telling on a number of things. Why not three concurrent pianos then? Enter Jacques Loussier with the Pekinel sisters. Cello is challenging for the lower midrange. Enter Croatian singer Oliver Dragojevic accompanied by Stjepan Hauser on cello; as well as Anna Lechner accompanying Greek pianist Vassili Tsabropolous against some minimal percussion.


For transient fidelity I like Flamenco guitar, oud, sitar and assorted percussion of course. With Antonio El Titi's "Como Fusion" rumba from Disfruto Flamenco, I had a very free-wheeling guitar cut that covers Flamenco, Jazz and Salsa to keep it stylistically interesting; whilst Anoushka Shankar's buleria with piano would cover the second third; and Adnan Joubran on solo oud against tablas and more the third. Choral voices are very tricky to do well. Enter Sœur Marie Keyrouz with her Ensemble de la Paix and additional orchestral forces. Here it took sifting through seven albums to come up with a suitable cut at just 5:06 minutes. I also added classical/Klezmer clarinetist David Orlowsky serenading with the Singer Pur ensemble to visit crossover turf Jan Garbarek had previously staked with The Hilliard Ensemble. Renaud Garcia-Fons' monster 5-string upright is near mandatory show fare for which I picked from his album Solo - The Marcevol Concert. For female vocals I heard live I wanted a Lila Downs track from Pecados Y Milagros; for the obligatory girl 'n' guitar genre Tanja Tsarovska. Since for male operatic tenor few would walk out on Pavarotti, I had a suitable non-mainstream number. Because I'd heard Dhafer Youssef live five times already, I needed something by him, hence a cut each from his latest solo album and The Trio Joubran.


I also packed pure pleasure tracks for rooms whose sound I'd love; which were empty when I got there; and/or where I knew the exhibitor shares my tastes to not mind a brief excursion into more acquired taste territory. Bülent Ersoy, Gülay, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Roberto de Brasov, George Dalaras, Volkan Konak and Oum fell into that category. Playing good music people don't know can also do wonders for traffic as past shows have shown. Everyone knows Sting, many aren't familiar with his Live in Berlin album where he performed against symphony orchestra. Hence I grabbed his hit "Moon over Bourbon Street". For two groovy immersion tracks of the organic ambient sort, I had Mercan Dede and Caravan Serail. Those would be for 'after hours' exploits perhaps at Hifi Deluxe whose hours are 12:00 - 20:00.


How to carry one's music has become a good question in this transitional age of physical vs. virtual media. To cover most bases, I ripped my playlist across three CDs, then dumped it also to USB stick as AIFF files. I deliberately didn't go after better than 16/44.1 resolution. I'd be interested to hear show systems under 'normal' not idealized conditions. And looking at my personal library, normal still means CD quality by the overriding majority. Bringing 47 tracks of course was deep overkill. As show veterans know, one mostly ends up listening to the same two or three tracks to have a comparative basis. Still, it's nice to have some extras for when the right occasion arises. For example playing a Brazilian cut when you're with a Brazilian brand (Trio Esperanza for Audiopax), Turkish when you're with Absolare, Indian when at Rethm, Greek for Tune Audio and Aries Cerat or Serbian for Trafomatic and Auris Audio can be fun. Or not. Some exhibitors dislike their country's traditional music. True for me too. Swiss yodeling isn't my idea of a good time.

Bavarian State Opera

As to appointments? Again, I don't make any. And this very much despite the—cough!—pile-on of once-a-year invites where people or their spider software suddenly remember us only to forget all about 6moons again until the next show. The only exceptions thus are for staff. With John Darko in town on Tuesday after having flown in straight from Japan's headfi show, we were set for a meet Wednesday evening at the Marienplatz fountain for some pre-show R'n'R. Joël Chevassus who also publishes France's online Audiophile Magazine would do hifi on Friday and half Saturday, then real music the same evening. That's because he had tickets for a concert with Anne-Sophie Mutter at the Pleyel. "It's the last year we can attend good shows because our philharmonic orchestra will transfer to a new concert hall in East Paris. That's a poor decision in my book since the Pleyel has wonderful acoustics and is ideally located in the city center." Joël and I would meet up on Friday somewhere on the MOC's ground floor, cell phones at the ready to coordinate the exact location. That's globally diversified online publishing. Chances to meet one's collaborators in person are few and far between. A number of our guys I've never yet met. Ever. Who else would I run into? Time to improvise.


After checking into my Schlicker digs, I ran into my friend the Viktualienmarkt. That's an outdoor foodie market which, this being May, sprouted the obligatory May pole. It then tantalized with a resplendent assortment of meat, cheese, produce and wine vendors as well as various food stalls. For €4.20 I promptly tore into a carrot, ginger and coconut soup with flower petals from a soup kitchen all whilst eyeing the ominous skies with droplets in the air. The weather over show weekend would mostly hold up with only mild showers. The overall temps were a bit cooler. Some Mediterranean visitors would find them a mite chilly. After doing my CD spree at Beck's, I met up with John Darko. He turned out to be a spiky-haired 2-meter tall bloke with a big smile. Hard to miss.


After covering introductory ground, our conversation over first Asian food, then coffee finally pub beer promptly drifted into mutual commiseration about the state of the audio press. Think declining standards of ethics, presentation and penmanship. We pretty much agreed on everything. Writers double-dipping as manufacturing consultants, evangelists, copy writers, importers and more was bad form though apparently acceptable in the US. Spelling and grammatical errors in virtually every sentence could be spotted on at least two sites. Perhaps desperate for content but with no inclination to vet and edit, did they just throw stuff up hoping for stiction? News releases disguised as reviews were another hot button. So were reviewers hiding behind visual anonymity by not publishing photos of their setups and rooms.


Wouldn't a 10' x 18' room instantly discredit writers swooning over 200lbs huge tower flagship speakers? Without photo documentation, this type of thing goes on unchecked all over the place. Just talk with folks who've actually delivered review kit to various writers. You'd be quite disappointed. How about a very established German magazine only having a single review system on hand into which whatever shows up for testing must slot? Talk about meager tool belts. Related bits arose in a later conversation with the lovely couple of HifiPig.com who—I'd pegged 'em based out of the UK—turned out to work from Brittany instead. That makes them French immigrants and UK expats. Not getting into hard descriptions of what something sounds like to instead riff very casually on "I had a fun time with x and was sad to see it leave" came up with Ralph Werner of Fairaudio.de. I ran into him in an upper hallway of the MOC. Reviewers not even opening up boxes did too. One anecdote divulged was on how surprised a manufacturer was to receive a 'review' on a brand-new product they'd not even sent out yet. Oops. Names were named, voodoo dolls got needled and effigies burnt in our imaginations. I have some very specific notions on how a credible hifi magazine ought to be run which are clearly shared by quality publications. It was a breath of fresh air to meet kindred spirits and feel reassured that the good fight online continues amidst indicators to the contrary.


Another 'French' couple from Canada introduced themselves at the MOC. Working under the just-launched Pulsion Audio URL, they reported on a quite enthusiastic reception from domestic and imported producers alike. Those had grown fed up with dealing with their existing print magazines. An unexpected alternative was most welcome. With our own Joël Chevassus having launched Audiophile-Magazine in France for very similar reasons—an absence of an independent voice—I suggested to the Canadians that getting together with Joël as two French-language outfits might be a good idea. The rest is up to them.