The 2017-2018 Season so far: May 15th Meeting: Our Hearing System Friends, lend me your ears!  We are pleased to offer something a little different for our final meeting of the season. The Society is very fortunate to showcase Mr. Kevin Dee, audiophile and certified Hearing Practitioner at AllSound Hearing, who will delve into many things hearing related and how they pertain to our favorite hobby. Kevin has asked if any Members have specific questions, and he will address them as time allows. Monday, April 16th Meeting at 7:00PM: John Atkinson of Stereophile John Atkinson, Editor of Stereophile, in the flesh, will be our guest on MONDAY, April 16 at the wonderful Pavek Museum of Broadcasting. John’s topic will be “A Life in Audio”. John has an interesting history in audio circles, from being a bassist in a band, to writing and editing for magazines such as HiFi News and Record Review and the renowned high end magazine, Stereophile. John will be coming directly from AXPONA in Chicago so he should have some interesting things to say about that, as well. Again, our meeting is MONDAY, April 16 at 7:00PM. The Pavek is normally not open on Monday but they're making a special exception for us in order to accomodate our guest's schedule. March Meeting: Warkwyn / Misco tour! Our March 20th meeting (please note 6:30PM start time and special location) will be hosted by Warkwyn/MISCO, the Twin Cities' premier loudspeaker design and manufacturing facility. Warkwyn is also the sales and support agent for Klippel GmbH, a leader in acoustical and electromechanical vibration testing and measurement. Founded in 1949, MISCO is recognized as a global leader in OEM loudspeaker production for the CE, MI, and pro audio, along with specialized transducer technologies for military, medical, aerospace and mass transit applications. A tour of the manufacturing and test facilities will be preceded by an overview of the company’s history and current activities. We had an informal factory tour and several of the engineering and sales people were on hand to share information about their Klippel Nearfield Scanner, with which they can make very detailed frequency response and directivity measurements of a loudspeaker over a full spherical space without the use of an anechoic chamber. They also have a transducer characterizing room that can scan a woofer and display 3D and cross-section views of cone vibration modes.  February Meeting: Michael Romanowski of Coast Mastering! Our February 20th meeting featured mastering engineer extraordinaire Michael Romanowski, founder of Coast Mastering, chapter president of The Recording Academy (the Grammy folks), and Managing Director and Co-Owner of The Tape Project. During this very-cool remote presentation, Michael will open his mastering suite to us, and discuss not only the process and mechanics of mastering, but will also take your questions about all things analog and digital. Learn more at: http://www.coastmastering.com/ . January Meeting: Bring and Brag! On January 16th, we proudly hosted our annual Bring and Brag music fest. We encourage you to bring an interesting recording or two to listen to, as always, on our "Mostly Minnesota Made" system. We can accommodate many digital disc formats on our multi-format player and we also have an excellent turntable to play your (clean) vinyl records. (List of tracks forthcoming) November Meeting - Dust and Grooves On Tuesday, November 21st at 7:00PM, we are excited to present Mr. Josiah Titus, feature writer for the Dust & Grooves project; The website, blog site, publishers, interviewers, and all things related to collecting vinyl audio. To quote Dust & Grooves, concerning Josiah, “Josiah is a record collector and writer. From country 78s to avant-garde jazz, from singer songwriters to disco, his record collection runs the gamut. His stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. He lives with his wife and son in Minneapolis.” We look forward to a very interesting evening of analog information and news, plus tips on collecting. Learn more about the project at www.dustandgrooves.com and on Facebook under “Dust & Grooves: Vinyl Music Culture”. October Meeting - Audio Research Corp Tour On Tuesday October 17, we are extremely fortunate to have been invited for an extensive tour of the Audio Research facilities. Yup, this is definitely a big deal. Audio Research has been making High End audio products for decades! The engineering staff at Audio Research will guide factory tours and everyone will have the opportunity to audition and ask questions about their new Foundation Series of products --the VT80, LS28 and DAC9-- which have been receiving rave reviews in the audio press. Audio Research is also doing a bit of "house cleaning" and will have some interesting door prizes to give away to lucky ASM members. September Meeting: DIY Streamer / PC Digital Output As fall approaches and we continue our search for musical ecstasy, we will be discussing various methods to get all those musical bits into our systems. Join us on Tuesday, September 19 at 7:00PM, as our very own Chuck Bottemiller will focus on a DIY renderer and the various low cost options for transferring our digital music files into our HiFI systems. Many software options now support Tidal, Spotify, Apple airplay and various other solutions, so we will see what we can make of all of these options as well as USB vs SPDIF interfaces. Cool. |