Folk, Rock & in between 🍀

 

Hooray for this new booklet!

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Goto in Vietnam 💫

 

Almost an art-installation.

Such a cool, elegant S150 platform and… look at the Goto SGs’ collection 

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To Wien or not to Wien?

 

After some pondering, I decided to don’t attend to the Vienna HiEnd Audio Fair.

The reasons are many and all absolutely legitimate: first, comes  my oblomovism, then the distance, costs, physical fatigue due to inexorably advancing age... but above all, after eight editions of the Munich fair, I feel a very significant, perhaps incurable, psychological fatigue: I know exactly how many people I know will be dressed, I know exactly the exorbitant price of a sandwich or a bottle of mineral water, I know that at the Silbatone stand, Maria Callas and Led Zeppelin records will be played at impossible volumes on unattainable cinema speakers and everyone will be elbowing each other over the high cost of amplifiers and preamplifiers... Aries Cerat will almost certainly present impressive new speakers, which, like ACapella, will cost millions... an absolutely embarrassing, painful sense of déjà vu, with flocks of audiophiles of different nationalities mingling in the corridors mostly talking about the sky-rocketing high prices of this or that and the Chinese stands always impeccably kept and sadly empty. 

It will certainly be hotter than expected and - aside from the pleasure of greeting some friends who will be exhibiting for the first time - a fair like this represents a niche sector whose target audience ages year after year, without any real generational turnover… looking at elder people (so similar to me) spending in vintage discs at inflated price-tags sums worth the life and care of many children in war-zones makes me sad and guilty.

I'll definitely miss chatting with Joe Roberts, Beau Ranheim and JC Morrison, greeting Michael Fremer and a few others... but this feeling of having to "participate to exist" is frankly pointless!

 I don't need or haven’t to buy anything, I have more records than I can listen to for the rest of my life, and—frankly—audio and music are a solitary, poetic, almost mystical journey that doesn't fit well in the glittering world of the contemporary audio industry. 

My personal parameters differ from others, and I'm not seeking approval or proselytes as my actual frailty and disenchanted and realistic (pessimistic?) approach is my very own, period.

Let's just say I feel more like an ascetic with a deep love for music than a tycoon with a fat wallet and that my home audio system never sounded this good, also without spending millions.

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According to rumors, I believe (and hope) the fair will return to Munich in a few years... we'll see what the future holds. 

Personally, I hope fair attendees in Vienna’s HiEnd will find reasons to be interested and learning how to better enjoy music.

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Munch’s mike 😱