It’s been a few weeks since LSAF 2024, and I feel it’s finally time for me to share my perspective on things. I want to stress that this comes from a first-timer – I’ve never “shown” at a show before. I’m not a true exhibitor in that sense.. I’m just here wanting to share some sweet tunes and some of the components I’ve acquired over the years.
At a high level, it was indeed
Arrival and Setup
I would be lying if I said I got to the venue (okay okay, the hotel) on time. It was still the day before the official start of the show, but fairly late in the day. Thus, I didn’t have a lot of time to get everything “mostly” set up. I had a lot to move.
I was somewhat relieved to see that I wasn’t the only one getting in late in the day. I would have liked to meet and greet the other exhibitors but instead I spent the rest of the night assembling the system and getting it to a point that I was mostly happy with.
In engineering there’s this common rule of thumb called the 80/20 rule. 20% of the overall effort will achieve 80% of the result. That final 20% takes 80% of your time/effort. It can honestly be applied to many facets of life, not just engineering.
Anyways, that’s where I ended the night at 1am, with the system 80% setup. Being away from the family won’t stop by my body from still waking up at 6am. Thank you kids (and dog). Incidentally, it was fortunate I woke up that early as I ended up needing all the time I could get to really dial in the system.
Interestingly enough, the speakers kept on creeping over to the right slightly. When I had set them up the previous night, I put them where I thought the center of the room would be acoustically. The final spot ended up being about a foot to the right (looking at the system). By that point, I already had all the gear loaded up on the stand and didn’t feel like moving it. It’s not like I was a vendor, I was there for fun.
For attendees that wanted to put on their own music, I brought a 10″ tablet from the stone ages to control Roon. It worked pretty well, if not a little slow at times.
Friday
I want to reiterate that this was my first show ever as an “exhibitor” though using that term for me is a stretch. Yes, I was there show off my favorite gear, but I’m fairly close with the builder of the tube amps (Frank Ing of Triode Lab) and so wanted to help him out where I could.
I was told ahead of time by “the regulars” that Friday was the quiet day. And, well, they weren’t wrong. I had a constant flow of people in and out, but it was never more than a few at a time. I still felt busy though – again, first time…
It was nice though. I had some really great conversations and it gave the people that went through on Friday the time to listen to what they wanted.
It wasn’t really until Friday afternoon that I had time to step away and meet/greet others at the show. I had also decided to put the Triode Lab 2a3 Americano monoblocks (say that 5 times fast) on for the rest of the day to see how they sounded. Try as I might, I could not get the Coherent speakers and the 2a3 to gel. After the day was over, I swapped them back out for the EL84M monoblocks.
This is where they sat for the rest of the show. It was such a weird thing, as I run the same speakers with the same amp and preamp at home… it just goes to show you how much the room matters.
Saturday
I was warned ahead of time that Saturday is always the busiest day of the event. And everyone was right. I’ll be completely honest that I don’t remember much other than consistently having people in the room. I received a lot of great feedback about the system, but also very fair criticism that I agreed on. Perhaps it was some setup error on my part, but the GR10’s did sound slightly congested in the 250-500 Hz region when playing complex pieces at high volumes. I reached out to Frank at Coherent and he had some comments on how to fix or resolve the issue. I’ll definitely be giving that a shot at some point.
At the end of the show on Saturday, everyone gathered in the lobby for some tube amps and other gear to be given away, lottery style. I won a pair of full range drivers but ended up giving them away as I wasn’t too interested in diy at that point.
Sunday
Sunday was the most interesting day for me perhaps. While I did very much enjoy two days with the Coherent speakers, I was excited to setup the Selah Audio Ritorno‘s. To the best of my knowledge, I have the only pair in existence. I bought them from Rick Craig shortly after the 2019 LSAF show and brought them back as a tribute to him since he had passed in 2021.
Just as with Saturday, there was a lot of interest in the speakers, and there were a good number of people that were quite sad the Selah Audio speakers weren’t available anymore. It was a pretty wonderful combination in that room – even I was surprised with how good it sounded.
I do remember some of the attendees I met. Two people part of a hifi group in the DFW metroplex that I am now happily a member of (I’ll talk more on this later), and one of the founders of Manhattan Project Brewing.
Overall, Sunday was my favorite day. Saturday and Friday were great too, but I had more time to talk and share a love of music with attendees on Sunday.
Alrighty, this was a bit longer than I had intended but that happens!