Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well!

Pacific Audio Fest Report - Part 1

I just got home from three very enjoyable days attending the Pacific Audio Fest in Seattle, Washington.

Big kudos to Lou Hinkley and Gary Gill for putting on such a spectacularly good audio fest.

I've got all kinds of musings, meditations, observations, and random thoughts to share with you in stream of consciousness fashion about my Pacific Audio Fest experience, which I'll be adding as an ongoing series of pages to this article, so check back for updates as I continue to add pages as "Part 1", "Part 2", "Part 3", and so on, about the Fest. 

There was so much to see and talk about at the 2022 Pacific Audio Fest (hereinafter 'PAF') that it is really impossible to see it all and talk about it all in any detail, so this 'show report' will be a necessarily incomplete overview at the 10,000 foot level.

There was so much to do at the PAF that I would lose track of time, and ended up missing a number of talks that I really wanted to attend, missing exhibitor rooms that I wanted to visit, or not getting a chance to stop and catch up with friends who were attending like I wanted to.

Sorry about those boo boos during my mad rush through the show, and I hope in 2023 that I do better in covering all the bases! 

I do hope I can give you a sense of what it was like to attend the PAF - it was a blast - and if you weren't able to attend, I encourage you to attend in 2023!

First off, let me say a big "Thank you!" to Lou Hinkley for asking me to write a "Welcome to the Pacific Audio Fest" article for the the PAF Show Directory.

It was a true honor for me to be asked, and to be able to contribute to the PAF effort - thanks Lou!

The article's focus was to give ideas to attendees on how to have a great time and get the most out of their visit to the PAF.

I actually put into practice what I wrote, as my good friend Doc Leo (photo below) was able to escape the surgery for a few days to attend the Pacific Audio Fest with me as his first audio show.

I had a ball showing Leo around the PAF and introducing him to my audio pals. We had a great time!

You couldn't ask for a better introduction to an audio show than the Pacific Audio Fest, it was exceptional in every way!

I'll reproduce the "Welcome to the Pacific Audio Fest!" article on one of the later pages of my show report, so that if you didn't get a chance to attend this year, perhaps the article will whet your appetite and give you ideas for attending in 2023. 

One of the things I realized too late was that I didn't take enough photos of people at the show. In my mad dash around the PAF I tried to fit in as much of the experience as possible, take photos of exhibitor rooms and audio kit, and I wish I'd taken more photos of people to share with you.

It really felt great to get out for an adventure, even if it was only a short three days. It was fun catching up with old friends, meeting new friends, and just enjoying the moment at the PAF.

Let me thank all of you who came up to introduce yourselves to me during the show, it was a great honor for me to meet you. I really appreciate you taking a moment of your time to chat with me at the show.

When you are a writer laboring away in your audio cave writing articles, its hard to know if what you've written has been meaningful for those who read it like you hope, so a big "Thank you!" to those of you who took time to share with me how my scribblings have helped you along in your audio adventures - you made my day!  

Next year I hope I have enough presence of mind to get a photo of each of you for my show report! 

The Audio Note (UK) room.

One observation: If you've been reading my writing for a while you know that I usually grouse about there being only a few exhibitor rooms out of the many that have musically satisfying sound quality, which is just the nature of the difficult room environment of an audio show for exhibitors. 

Imagine you are an exhibitor, and you've shipped all your components to a show. After you fly in from your journey from whatever distant place you've come from on Planet Earth, you have to get your shipping crates from the loading dock, scramble to unpack everything, setup your audio system, get it voiced to your room in a very short amount of time, and get ready for the onslaught of show attendees that will be passing through your room.

The Troy Audio Room.

Honestly, I don't know how the exhibitors manage it, it would be incredibly difficult!

Well the good news is, and somewhat to my astonishment, there were way more good sounding rooms at PAF than I've ever encountered at an audio show before, like maybe 95% of them sounded great, and were musically superb.

I was very truly impressed, and kept blabbering on about the remarkable musicality and sound quality of the majority of the rooms to everyone I met.

The Wells Audio room.

Many of the rooms were larger than you normally see at an audio show, so that helped I think to achieve better sound quality, and ... wait for it ... there seems to be an emerging trend in the industry to purposely design audio systems with more musically natural sound quality, instead of the once prolific exaggerated peaky presence region designs of years past.

That's great news! Hoo-ray! 

The Pure Audio Project room.

Another observation: I felt like Rip Van Winkle emerging from his 20 year sleep after living in my 'covid cave' for the last three years. The world has changed a lot in those three years, including the audio world.

If PAF was any indication, the audio industry has been busy designing and building some terrific audio kit as the world went to full-stop covid mode, and the results of their efforts are spectacular. There were so many amazing examples of hifi kit that I've never heard of or seen before that I was somewhat in shock.

Yet another observation: There was great international representation at the PAF, and I really enjoyed meeting exhibitors from China, Israel, Denmark, Australia, England, Mexico, Canada, the USA, and many other countries.

Thanks to everyone for coming to the PAF, I/we really enjoyed visiting with you!

The NFS 'Not For Sale' room.

I've got lots of good stories to tell you about. I'll lead with one about the 'NFS' room to pique your interest, which easily wins my 'Audio Oasis Award'.

'NFS' means 'not for sale', and truly there was nothing for sale. I'm not completely sure I have all my facts straight, so those of you who know more about the terrific folks who hosted the NFS room, please correct me and elaborate in a comment, if I misstate anything or have left out something important.

Here's what I was told by a number of people via word of mouth: "You've got to visit the 'secret' NFS room. A couple of super cool retired dentists transported a vintage system of audio kit to the show from Vegas and/or California (I heard several different versions of the story), and set it up in one of the PAF rooms, just for fun, to have a music and audio party."

I'll just mention the loudspeakers, which are shown in the photo above. They loudspeakers had 1950s vintage Altec drivers in custom cabinets with a wood HF horns. They had stock Altec crossover circuits restored with new components. The NFS vintage Altecs sounded absolutely fantastic!

The NFS Docs were remarkably gracious to all of us wandering the halls of PAF who happened to find their 'secret' room.

They hosted a full bar, offering first class beverages to all who happened to wander into their room. They also had a batch of their excellent home-brew limoncello made from lemons from their own lemon trees. They offered Doc Leo and I a glass of their home brew limoncello, and boy, was it ever potent! One glass put me half in the bag! 

Truly a lot of fun, and a big tip of the hat to the great folks in the NFS room, you rock, and thank you so much for what you do!

Click on the link below to go to Part 2.