NY Audio Show 2013

"Classic Album Sundays", the vinyl-oriented listening event founded by Colleen "Cosmo" Murphy is part of the New York Audio Show. Murphy's events, which started in the UK and are now occurring around the world, attract music fans to a venue where they hear a full album on vinyl through a good audio system. During the event, cell-phones must be turned off and talking is discouraged. Since most of the attendees have never heard a good audio rig, most sit, mouth agape, unable to talk anyway!

Each session begins with a history of the album and artist and Murphy tries to enlighten attendees about every aspect of the history. Better yet, she's managed to attract some great guests. How would you have liked to attend the CAS presentation of Pink Moon hosted by original producer and Nick Drake confidant Joe Boyd? Soon Murphy will present an evening of Bowie hosted by both Producer Tony Visconti and engineer Ken Scott.

Murphy and show organizer The Chester Group chanced bringing CAS to the New York Audio Show. With people busy running from room to room trying to see and hear everything, the question was, would they sit through an entire album?

With help from Chester Group for the large room, and from Wilson Audio Specialties for a pair of MAXX3s, VTL for a pair of big Siegfried tube amps and VTL Reference preamp and phono preamp, plus Transparent Opus cabling and power conditioning and a Spiral Groove SG 1.1 turntable and a pair of Centroid arms, one fitted with a Lyra Atlas courtesy Audioquest and another fitted with a Miyajima Labs ZERO courtesy Robin Wyatt Audio, for mono playback, chances were good the system would impress.

While the large room presented some serious acoustic challenges that were unmet with room treatment mostly because the amount needed would have been enormous, the sound was mostly very good. Better yet the crowds have so far been very, very good and appreciative.

Murphy presented David Bowie's Hunky Dory and Talking Heads Remain in Light on Friday to small groups in the morning, but that was press morning and she did it more to acquaint the press with the format and with what she's doing.

At 3PM on Friday I presented the Boxstar double 45rpm mono reissue of Julie London's Julie Is Her Name and the sound through the ZERO was magnificent, in part because the backing of acoustic guitar and bass did not excite the room resonances and in part because the ZERO is an insanely good mono cartridge.

Directly after that I did almost an hour and a half to a packed audience there to hear about matrix codes, mastering engineer squiggles and the like. I guess the audience liked it because it got applause, which amazed me. I didn't even juggle.But I think I told a few jokes. I don't remember anymore. Saturday I presented John Hiatt's superb Bring the Family album to a sparse crowd, probably in part because Art Dudley was doing a seminar elsewhere on the joys of vintage gear and in part because the Hiatt album is not that well known. In fact, many who came walked out. Their loss.

After Murphy presented Pet Sounds to a packed house I did a turntable set-up seminar to a standing room only only crowd, after which Murphy repeated Hunky Dory.

Friday and Saturday nights she screened the record store documentary "Last Shop Standing."

Today will be Kraftwerk's Autobahn, Stevie Wonder's Innervision and Love's Forever Changes. In between the latter two I'll do an hour on pressing quality and sonic differences among pressings of the same album. I will not show my opinion down people's throats. Instead I'll play and they can decide.

From all indications, between attendance at most of the listening sessions and seminars, the experiment has been a huge success.