...AND THEY IS US

The audio show began and continues as one means whereby the products of our audio art may be brought to the notice of the interested public.

That's what I might say if I were in a mood for formality. I seldom am. And, as noted last month, I am lately having some curious thoughts as to what events are indeed audio shows. The two biggest, in my view, are the twice a-year CES and the twice-a-year U.S. conventions of the AES, as you may have read, somewhat to your surprise, last month. Neither is billed as an audio show. Just a Canby notion. But having started on this line, I've come up with more. First, let us revert to the dim past: The first audio show ever.

The first audio show-the first that was nominally all hi-fi, at least-was organized back in our beginning years under a tricky title, the Audio Fair, long since forgotten. The inspiration might have come from the big Book Fairs, held in this country and Europe to bring the publishers directly to the reading public. I was innocent of politicking in those days, and so I can tell you nothing of the management intricacies that got the Audio Fair going, the deals that were undoubtedly put together to make it a surprisingly big event right from the start, and out of nothing previous. I am aware that our then Editor somehow had his finger in the pie--he was there, at the show, practically everywhere and full time.

And so this magazine was there, too.

(We always had a room or a desk where I could leave my hat and coat and armfuls of printed propaganda.) The man I recall who did the actual organizing job at the top--his reign was short and brilliant--was one Harry Reises (if I spell him right), a shortish, genially pudgy and cheerfully forceful character whom you could immediately figure was a "Promoter." This small man with a huge cigar could get things going, any old things-like maybe a rodeo, a Broadway spectacular, a beauty pageant, fashion show, political powwow-anything that could be made three times bigger than life. He looked the part. He was obviously taken on in order to blow up "hi-fi," which was a modest little biz at that point, into something much, much bigger.

Now Harry Reises suddenly had a falling out, after a few years-with whom, I do not know, nor under what circumstances, dire or merely casual.

Anyway, he vanished and so did the Audio Fair, the idea to be taken up by other groups and institutions--the IHF ( Institute of High Fidelity), for instance, if you can call a trade organization an institute. (You can.) But while the Audio Fair was around, it certainly flourished.

It was a brand-new thing and very exciting to all, inside and out of audio.

This was a Big Show, of the sort that was common enough in other areas, and still is, such as automobiles, motorboats, flowers, sporty goods, major appliances, and so on, all offering dazzling visible wonders from many manufacturers. But the crazy plan for the new venture was to feature sound. Of all unlikely subjects, that seemed the most impossible, wouldn't you say? At least with multiple makers and multiple sound sources on hand.

And so it almost proved. To this day, the actual sound at our hi-fi shows is mostly cacophony. Frankly, I've always hated it. One piece of music at a time is my taste, and at a reasonably loud volume, please. (I didn't say soft music! I dislike that almost as much because I always have to listen, and soft music can be a strain, like reading in poor light.) Audio shows are mostly noise, noise, and more noise-except, of course, where prohibited, as in the AES Convention public areas. What made the idea of a sound show workable was product to look at and people to persuade. That's what really mattered: Product in vast quantities and variety; people of, shall I say, every persuasion, including company engineers and presidents. You could talk to them.

(You could even bait them, I might add.) So the new idea of an audio show, a sound show, at least in name-got off to a whale of a good start.

Now once in each audio generation, I think it necessary to repeat an extraordinary technical aspect of the first audio shows, in case you didn't know.

The first and subsequent Audio Fairs were held in an oldish, high-rise New York hotel furnished throughout with direct current. Can you imagine anything more preposterous? I don't know the politics of that remarkable situation--ask Harry Reises, if you can locate him. But I do know all too well that, until after WWII, most big American cities were heavily invested with d.c., often in large areas of many blocks, but also, via piecemeal conversion, in sections of town that had both a.c. and d.c. side by side in utter confusion. When you went apartment hunting in those days, your first question was, "Are you on d.c.?" Somehow I seemed always to end up on d.c. in my more impecunious days.

I am afraid I have been guilty of more than one audio disaster in this respect. Just plug a piece of a.c. equipment into a d.c. outlet (identical to the a.c.), and whatever you had immediately melted down, with acrid clouds of smoke and hideous sizzling noises. I also remember one furnished room, d.c., in which I mounted a huge d.c.-a.c. "motor generator" in the back of my closet. To silence its objectionable noise, I unceremoniously piled blankets and pillows on top of the thing-a wonder I didn't go up in flames. The filtering was imperfect, as might be expected, so your music buzzed nastily. And the pitch, unadjustable, was always wrong. (Unregulated a.c. alternator.) The manufacturers of these obviously had tin ears.

So the Hotel New Yorker, on Eighth Avenue just north of 34th Street, had d.c. They probably couldn't help it.

And this was the chosen venue for the first hi-fi show! Does seem strange, doesn't it? There was, of course, some rationality. In the tenth or so subbasement of that building, there was an in-house a.c. alternator, a big one, clearly an emergency installation to forestall what was obviously a growing problem.

Some of the hotel's private rooms, not all, thereby had acquired two sets of outlets, a.c. and d.c. The lights in these rooms were d.c. (you did not plug in extension cords); all the public areas, all corridors and so on, were d.c. Only the special extra outlets provided the juice that we in audio rather definitely needed. I do not remember any special identifying marks on them, though I might be wrong.

So the Audio Fairs took place on top of a thousand electrical time bombs set to trap the unwary. How many pieces of equipment died of d.c., I do not know, but at least our people were aware of the horrible consequences of a mistake. Throughout the day, the familiar cacophony of multiple loud sound sources continued unbroken, as it does today, and I remember no cordoned-off areas smelling of short circuit. That alternator could cope, in-house or no, since obviously it was a large professional machine. No buzz of interference, the pitch an accurate 60 cps on the nose. The audio played very nicely on our hi-fi gear in all its multiplicity.

Obviously, in the planning for these first shows, somebody must have brought up the matter of sonic interference as between so many manufacturers. There must have been heated discussions and plenty of high-minded suggestions that wouldn't work in a real world. Set up a ballroom schedule, giving each manufacturer 10 minutes to do his own demo, solo? Fat chance that would work! Nor any other plan that might curtail the manufacturer's right to make a loud noise with his equipment. The procedure that was finally adopted, insufficient and full of holes (audio holes), shaped all the audio shows that have come since: Shut 'em all up in the hotel rooms. Let 'em blast away to their ears' content inside those rooms.

Well, we all know how that worked out. Who's to keep the hotel doors shut? There's only one way to do that lock them. (Or shut off your sound and take a 15-minute break.) In any case, mere doors are hardly enough to contain the kind of audio we were (and are) putting forth. Nor hotel room walls.

I can hear 30 years of loud thumpings and squallings next door while I tried to listen to some esoteric trifle on the highbrow side. So from the very first Audio Fair to the latest miracle in Singapore or Tokyo, the corridors continue to be filled with toxic audio mishmash and there's nothing much to be done about it. Except to turn up your sound still higher in your room, and overwhelm the competition.

Even that dignified organization, the AES, gave way to sonic practicality when it sanctioned closed-door demos inside private rooms. Somehow, I'll admit, the AES has managed better than most to restrict corridor cacophony. Is it stricter enforcement? Or is it that they sometimes leave five empty rooms between exhibits as a sonic barrier? There was one aspect of the original Audio Fairs that I haven't mentioned in detail to this generation of readers.

Yes, the in-house a.c. wasn't bad at all, and you could forget it in short order while the now-familiar roar of sound grew louder and louder as each day wore on. In effect, the d.c. problem was very well solved. In those days, I was at the Fair just about every minute, from the opening (at a decent morning hour) until ... . Wham! At exactly the time when, after hours and hours, the general excitement had mounted to an awful and exciting crescendo, the very peak of cacophony, in a few brief seconds there was total silence. Not a squeak, not a whisper of audio anywhere. The a.c. was turned off.

Was it 6 o'clock? Or 10? I don't remember. But I vividly recall the shock of that moment. It always caught everybody unawares. By that time, we were immersed in a thousand enthusiastic shouted conversations and in a solid blast of audio you would never believe if you hadn't heard it plenty of times since. Suddenly, we were in an audio ghost town. Yes, the exhibits were still there, the personnel still could talk, there was no darkness because, of course, all the lights were on d.c. But an eerie hush settled quickly over us.

Shouts faded to whispers. And in maybe 10 minutes, the place was empty.

Who wants silent audio?

(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY; adapted from Audio magazine, Nov. 1988)

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