THE show in Long Beach is apparently on for the second week of June. With COVID precautions, the entrepreneurs are planning on holding this show, along with about 10-15 exhibitors ( at the moment). I am wondering if anyone is planning on attending, even with the COVID precautions in place?
Yes, I'm going. Usually I'll book a room, but with the amount of exhibitors showing up, it'll be a quick affair for me.
Qobuz is an official sponsor and is giving away free trial if you purchase tickets it appears: Log into Facebook | Facebook
I will be there tomorrow. Looking forward to hearing some of the newer exhibits this year, including the Alsyvox speakers and the Stenheim's. Should be interesting to see the attendance.
I'm going. Got tickets for Saturday and Sunday. But I have a feeling I'll only need 1 day. Last one in 2019 was about 80+ rooms/exhibitors. This year about half. But, of course that's to be expected.
I bought my ticket for Saturday. This will be my first year going. In looking through the exhibitor list last night there were at least a dozen boutique brands that piqued my interest. It should be a fun, informative outing.
Guys, Did anyone go today? If so, are they letting people in if they don't have proof of covid test/or vaccination? Thank you very much
I was at the show today. Firstly, they do ask for either proof of a Vaccination or Covid test ( as I believe they should). One gent in front of me in the line had neither, they asked him to step aside and somehow I think they handled it...not sure how?? The show was fairly well attended with a few nice exhibits and some great gear. My only issue this year was that most rooms were BRIGHT BRIGHT BRIGHT! Possibly due to the room itself and/or the power from the hotel. The other gripe I have, and this is probably just me---too much talking and most systems are played way too loud ( resulting in bleed over from room to room). Nonetheless, I enjoyed this show more than the last one, possibly due to the smaller size. ( although the overall SQ was worse). The organization was also better this year than in the past--so overall a nice experience and worth the visit.
It’s kind of amazing how little coverage this is getting with the magazines. Only Stereophile is stepping up to the plate. Since this is the first post pandemic audio show to go live in this country (BTW, that “first” includes the pro audio world also) I would expect more fanfare.
How long would you say that you need to see most/all of the exhibitor rooms? 4-5 hours? More than 1 day?
I did the show in one day. More than sufficient for me. BUT i tend not to spend a lot of time in rooms that are of no interest to me. ( of which there were a few). I would think 4-5 hours is more than sufficient. There are only three (3) floors at the show, and maybe 20 rooms. OTOH, there are some nice LP's and CD's at the vendors, so one could spend considerable time looking at those.
It turned out to be smaller than I figured. I looked at the map of sold rooms on the exhibiters part of the site, and counted more sold rooms. It was easy to do in a half a day. Not a lot of venders in the marketplace either. So good sounding systems though.
Yep, I was done in less than three hours. Glad there were vendors there too. For me it was about supporting the show as it is all we pretty much have in Southern California, as far as I know. I got back home within the afternoon. Oddly enough, there was more traffic within my county limits than Long Beach.
Funny you should mention about the traffic. I noticed exactly the same thing yesterday. The traffic was really bad once I hit the county limits..and not too bad in the LA area. This is actually not the first time I have noticed this...which is telling me that the SD county traffic is now probably worse than in LA!! ( can that be possible, LOL)
We drove back from Napa to San Diego Friday morning and hit LA traffic at about 1pm, which was slow and go. Mission Viejo got worse, but then as soon as we got to San Onofre it was stop and go ALL the way to Loma Santa Fe. We didn't get home until 4:30pm. I've noticed this trend and I don't think I can drive the I-5 anymore - it has sucked the life force from my soul too many times.
I agree, there was very little fanfare about this and it was surprising to me, mainly because of the first show post-pandemic aspect, you would think there would have been more excitement about it. I went on Sat all day and Sun for 2 hours and it was overall a lot smaller than any show I have been to (all in California). But I was not disappointed in the least given the circumstances. It just felt good to be able to go to a show at all. I bought a LOT of vinyl - Elusive Disc had lots to buy and I think most were priced at slightly below the online price ($30 instead of $35, $50 instead of $55, etc.) plus no tax (same as online) and Analog shop had a lot of nice vintage vinyl including a lot of sealed items. Got some promos including some OOP MoFis. Since there was less crowd than usual, there was less competition for the limited stuff. As stated, there were less listening rooms than usual, but I just spent more time in the rooms I went to and it made it more relaxing covering the whole thing. Plus, my 2 day ticket was only $20 and today I got free street parking across the street from the grounds, so all in all low cost. Overall, I am glad they put this on, it is just one more thing that helps to make it feel like our lives are finally coming back to normal.
Parttime Audiophile, Enjoy The Music and Tone Audio used to do heavy coverage of west coast shows. Only one of them even mentioned this show as of yesterday when I checked. Those websites used to be plastered with reviews and pictures of systems in rooms.
I went to the show today and had a good enough time. Basically the smaller systems on the third floor sounded much better than the mega-dollar systems on the first and second floors. I have to tip my hat to the Prana room. Those guys are fracking cool! I listened to three LP selections. One of them being the remix Sgt. Peppers opening cut since they saw my tee shirt . All the vinyl sounded damn good! Then they played a CD that sounded really good too; and for me to like a CD source is saying a LOT! Other than that it was nice to see some industry friends again.