Saw this mentioned over at Audio Asylum. I'm sure at least a few of the NorCal folks here will probably want to attend. Lots of interesting vendors too: California Audio Show by Dagogo

At first I was semi-interested in traveling out for it, but man, whoever picked a location way out in Emeryville needs a smack upside the head. The hotel venue isn't even close to at least the Oakland airport?! The date will probably be a conflict for me anyway, but that is some serious planning ineptitude. Way to kill the incentive for out-of-town travelers.

Yup,.. I'm figuring on going on Saturday.

AES is in SF this year too,.. and maybe I'll get over to Denver this year. (man, I love those mattresses at the Tech Center hotel!)

Strange-ish location. Handy for Ikea, or if you come by Amtrak I suppose. Aways from the newly opened Five Guys though

Yeah, weird huh? Maybe the town council is trying to improve on their image as a toxic waste dump.

But,.. it's not very far from Oakland's Jack London Sq and Yoshi's Jazz Club.

John Pizzarelli is playing that weekend,.. great guitarist!

Yeah, bleh location, unless you actually like maze traffic

I might be coerced into driving in for it, depending on what sort of a group we can muster.

Event's this coming weekend, thought there'd be more NorCal folks interested in this by now....? (plus I'd rather see impressions & pics from any HC-ers attending as opposed to the usual audio press publications)

Somebody else was just asking me if I could go, but nobody seems to have a good handle on how it will be. Can't make it but curious how it turns out.

Yeah I have plans that weekend too.

Yeah, weird huh? Maybe the town council is trying to improve on their image as a toxic waste dump.!

LOL

I went on Saturday. It was actually a nice little show with a high percentage of good sounding rooms IMHO.

The Magico room driven with VAC electronics was one of the highlights. So was the Evolution speakers/darTZeel room. The Quad/Convergent Audio Tech. and the Audio Note UK rooms also had really good sound.

Kind of a sleeper demo that had surprisingly real life sound was a small company called Inex Innovations. They build a cable system that uses optical cables for analog signals (I think?). All I can say is if the sound they were getting from a pretty modest vinyl system was the result of these cables, then these guys are really onto something. They're local here in the Bay Area and I might just have to beg them to borrow a pair ($2k a pair,.. yikes!).

I was able to listen to just about everything in one afternoon. It seemed like there was a much more relaxed atmosphere compared to the big shows. Maybe these smaller regional shows are the wave of the future.