KL International AV Show 2008 – First day

Boy, after all the hard work… the show is on!

The past few weeks of soldering, prototyping, trying out new circuits, tidying up existing mess, resolving logistic issues etc is now over! And we are finally making our debut at an audio show, after these years of operation.

And even though it’s just the first day, it is an awesome ride!

First thing first, met so many interesting characters. Many just couldn’t accept the sound of a single driver in horn enclosures. Some wouldn’t even give a chance but those that do, were mostly seen leaving with smiles on their faces! Quite a number left, then came back, left again, then came back again. Hey, if they left and came back, then spent even more time listening, I bet there’s something going on between their ears!

Most, as expected, never had a chance to listen to such a system before. More so a 100% designed and built in Malaysia system. I mean where else can you listen to such a system? Ha ha!

More so a vintage (>30 years) Coral Beta 6 in Hedlund horn enclosure? Being driven by a modified Squeezebox 3 (or a CDPRO2 based transport), then via Whitesnake! to Monica3, to Maggie2 (our new remote controlled volume control), to the 6GM8 tube preamp with output transformers, then lastly to Charlize2?

And all power supplies with the exception of Charlize2 is running off individual balanced isolation transformers. Charlize2 runs on a huge 12V 7Ah Hitachi battery.

And, to make things even more interesting, we don’t just play “girl and guitar” simple stuff. We play, among others, Carmina Burana, Joan Baez, Tom Waits, Empire Brass, the Apocalypto soundtrack…  In short, we had blues, jazz, rock and lots of lots of heavy stuff!

So who said single drivers can’t rock? At one point, when playing Jennifer Warnes’ “Way Down Deep”, the bass could be felt several rooms away!

Incidentally, we found that we have the most visitors flocking into the room whenever we play a heavy bass stuff. Seems like most folks just couldn’t believe all this energey could be projected so far and all from a 12V 10W class T amp! Way to go Charlize!

However, to me, the best part of the day is definitely at the last. At around 7.30pm, when the show is supposed to have ended, we blasted B52′s “Rock Lobster”, just for fun, when this music attracted the attention of an Italian couple.

After finding out they are Italian, I then told them about our lovely DAC is named after the even lovelier Monica and… guess what? They were suprised to have finally found us! It seems that they have been in Kuala Lumpur for 4 years and have been trying to find us, and they finally found us! Just when they were going to leave the show at the very very end.

Talk about destiny…

Will call it a day here. The weekend (Sat & Sun) is supposed to be the busy time so we’ll have to have a good night’s rest here. The stout should help.

I’ll update the blog with pics later. My digicam is with my wife, who is holidaying in Bangkok…

25 July 2008 | diyparadise | Comments