ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Welcome to Toronto, for
the first high end audio
show since…oh, what
has it been? Years? Sure.
Decades? Pretty much.
I go back far enough to recall that
there really was a good high end show in
Canada’s metropolis. It was called Airwaves,
and it would attract maybe three
dozen exhibitors, and mostly quality
exhibitors. So why the long hiatus? The
story deserves telling. I shall, however,
heed my lawyer’s urging not to bandy
about such adjectives as “retarded” and
“terminally stupid.”
There were once in fact two September
shows in Toronto. Both were near
the airport, which was far from ideal,
but the fact there were two shows helped.
One of them, run by a company called
Hunter-Nichols, concentrated on massmarket
consumer electronics products
and was held in an aircraft hangar. Airwaves
was in a hotel, as any proper high
end show must be. There was a shuttle
between the two, and there may even
16 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
Features
Toronto 2011
by Gerard Rejskind
have been a shuttle from downtown.
It was all fine until it wasn’t.
The last Airwaves — in 1985 if
memory serves — was held on a weekend
different from the Hunter-Nichols show,
and to top it off, it coincided with the
Jewish New Year. In the immortal words
of Nintendo, it was Game Over!
The first of the modern Montreal
shows had been held the previous year,
in 1984. There was a hiatus before it
became an annual event, but it quickly
acquired a reputation as a quality show
that could attract serious audiophiles,
and not just “tire kickers.” Toronto got
a new high end show as well, run by
a woman who had been with Hunter-
Nichols (she would later work with an
audio magazine named for a body part).
But she didn’t seem to understand the
audiophile world, and it showed. Hotels
were mostly selected on price, and that
meant remote (I recall only one which
was actually downtown. Some were so
close to airport runways that landing
jets would drown out the music. The
last ones had only a small handful of
rooms, which made the trek to Markham
scarcely worthwhile.
These horror stories had the perverse
effect of spreading the myth
that a Toronto show couldn’t be good.
That’s why there was a lot of skepticism
when TAVES (Toronto Audio-Visual
Entertainment Show) was announced.
The one ray of hope was that the people
who now run the Montreal show, Michel
Plante and Sarah Tremblay, would be
lending their demonstrated know-how
to this show as well.
The first good move was putting
the show right downtown, at the King
Edward Hotel, on King Street near
Yonge, and right on the subway line.
The King Eddie is old, built in 1903, but
a glance at its central atrium, shown on
this page, indicate that it is anything but
decrepit. It remains a quality hotel.
The second good move was inviting
Michel and Sarah to bring over their
technology, from signage to ticketing.
It was difficult to tour the show without
running into one or the other, because
they were present to make sure everything
was going all right.
The problem with a new show —
and after all these years it can only be
considered new — is convincing exhibitors,
who have more and more regional
shows to choose from, to spend time and
money on this one. A number of high
end distributors, understandably wary,
sat the show out, figuring they could
always sign up in 2012 if TAVES wasn’t a
disaster. A number of others came aboard
figuring they’d give the new organizers
a chance, but only one chance. They’d
need to deliver…or else.
On the evidence, TAVES has delivered.
Because a show like this takes
18 months of preparation (and not 18
minutes, like the old shows), there will
be a TAVES in 2012, at the same hotel.
Pretty much all the exhibitors I talked
to were happy with their participation,
some of them deliriously so. Some were
especially happy that their competitors
hadn’t shown up!