Tags: travels
SORAsound will be visiting an associate and audiophiles in St. Louis area. If you are in St. Louis or on the way from Chicago, holler! For your enjoyment, we always carry some ZYX, Moerch and a few other goodies with us.
Tags: Auckland, food, New Zealand, travels
I have been in Auckland for a few weeks now. I will be posting some pictures soon. Love the people here. New Zealanders are some of the most open, approachable and sweetest people I have ever met in my life. I love their accents, and their sense of humor. Many times I catch myself not listening to what they say, but listening to their accents instead.
Auckland is a beautiful city. A bit spread, so despite being much bigger (size, and population) than San Francisco, it feels half as populated.
Cafe culture is great here. People seem to get out of their beds early, go to cafes, and have great coffee/breakfast. Easy to talk to the people sitting next to you. They are willing to tell you all about their city and country, helping you out with suggestions and directions.
At this point my favorite area in Auckland is Ponsonby, a Bohemian area, kinda up and coming, similar to where we live in Chicago, a bit like Berlin. As soon as I arrived in Auckland, took my shower, hired a cab to take me to this great cafe in Ponsonby, called Dizongoff. I have been a regular ever since.
I love New Zealand cheese. So delicious. Have also had some good New Zealand wines. I’ll be missing SORA’s birthday again but will be back home in time to celebrate Christmas with Nami and SORA. As always, a phone call or email away from my good friends.
I love Berlin. There is so much good music here, and so much interesting cultural activities. Arrived in Berlin last night, hit the ground running after a good shower. Today, went to the “Eastern” part of the town close to where the wall used to be.
Sundays are great in this part of Berlin. Lazy breakfasts/brunches, and flea markets where I was lucky enough to find some very good records. Fortunately it was a sunny and beautiful day, turned out to be the only sunny and beautiful day in the last couple of weeks. I walked for a few hours and as always managed to sniff my way to some record shops and flea markets. There were a few nice stands with records at the flea markets. Some of the records are pretty expensive (40 euros or more). By the time I got to these two gentlemen, I barely had enough euro left for a cab ride back to the hotel. They were kind enough to accept dollar bills from me, hence their pictures here. Between these stands and other shops, again I am in need of yet one more suitcase.
I enjoy the music of Holger Czuaky (formerly of CAN) very much. I am glad I found two records, one a rare one with Holger Czukay on it. I found out about a very good record shop in Berlin. I will be visiting there as I want Holger Czukay’s first solo performance after parting from CAN, called Persian Love! It has some very good sampling and use of short wave radio reception.
I was hoping to see Nina Hagen perform. Unfortunately she has a concert/poetry reading (a la Nina Hagen I am sure) on Wednesday night, a few hours after I am supposed to fly back to Chicago.
There are also a couple of restaurants I would like to try. One, Fischers Fritz and is known to have the best sea food in Berlin and has two Michelin stars; the other, Borchardt restaurant is supposed to be more traditional and has been a Berlin establishment/hallmark. Will soon post some pictures. Stay tuned.
Tags: 47 lab, amazon audio, davinci audio, lyra, moerch, munich, travels
It was a pleasure to attend the Munich Hi-End show. It was in particular important for me to see some friends, customers, manufacturers and other people from the industry. Spent a good amount of time with Roger Adamek of RCM Audio, walking around, and taking pictures. Roger is a very technical person. He approaches photography as an art and a science, same as his approach to building his high quality Bonasus amplifier and Sensor phono stage.
My dear friends Peter, and Jolanda of DaVinci Audio were as always enthusiastic and welcoming.. Everyone knows how stunningly good these high quality products are. I saw DaVinci Audio inUnison turntable in another room as well. Great sound. Can not wait for my blue inUnison.
AMAZON Audio room had on display Hartmut Janssen’s latest creations: First Choice turntable, and AMAZON Audio Speakers. Both great products that will soon be present at SORAsound showrooms.
Hans Henrik Moerch presented his tonearms and (finally) his latest reference creation. Moerch reference tone-arm just was selected as Absolute Sound’s 2010 Golden Ear Award.
Munich is a good city (pictures to be posted soon by my web lady), nice walks, great culture and friendly people. Many speak good English. As a city, it is a lot more interesting for me than Vegas. So, I was a lot more eager to go to the Munich Hi-End show than The CES.
In all honesty, the Munich Meridien Hotel was the least impressive Meridien Hotel I have ever stayed at, even though they had kindly upgraded me to an Executive room, and the service was about as good as all other Meridien Hotels I know of in other countries and America. The location is also pretty boring. So if you are heading to the Munich show next year, I neither recommend the hotel (unless you get a much better rate than I did) nor the area.
Had a very good meal at Tantris, known to be the best restaurant in Munich, and one of the best restaurants in Germany.
There were two events: hifideluxe at the Meridien Hotel, and Munich High-End show at the MOC, Munich. I am a pretty quick decision maker. I go to a Read more…
