Philadelphia area audio club?

To all who have recently posted here, Welcome! There are probably another 6-8 people who have not posted a message here but who have contacted me or Hugh directly. It's a pleasure to see this amount of interest in the Philadelphia area.

If you have not already done so, consider posting a little bit about your audio interests, your listening priorities, music you like, what brought you to this hobby, etc., so that we can each learn a bit about each other. (But remember that this is the Web... So be thoughtful about what you disclose and certainly do not post your phone number or address in this space.)

Regarding the invitation to my house on February 9, if everyone to whom I've sent directions comes we are close to the listening room's capacity. If you have an interest in joining us on the 9th, email me through Audiogon with your full name and home telephone (no cell phones please). If I can reverse lookup your telephone number to verify your home address, I'll be in touch with you with directions as long as we still have space.

Regards to all,

Although my stereo interests started way back in my early teens, in earnest things began to solidify in 1975/76. I was attending Penn State U. and was purchasing a new turntable - HarmonKardon ST-7 at Campus Stereo. While in the electronics shop downstairs, I mentioned this to another customer, who was interested in the Sonus Blue Label cartridge that I had purchased and invited me over to his place to hook up my turntable/cartridge into his system and I heard magneplanars for the first time. I have been in the maggie family ever since. I currently have upstairs and downstairs systems. The downstairs system (the big brothers) center around the Magneplanar Tympani IUs, Adcom GF555, Audible illusions Modulus 1a preamp and a Sota Saphire turntable with a Grado cartridge. Like classical and rock music. My upstairs system has migrated now toward DVDs and CDs. This system is centeredd around Magnepan MG 1.5's, and Sony Receiver (easy everyone!) Toshiba DVD/DVD Audio player and Sony Cassett deck. Now I'm into DVD big time! I think they finally have it right with extremely high quality Audio and video that has a reasonable and preferably direct relationship. And the Magnepan MG 1.5s have blown me away with their realistic reconstruction of the natural timbre of anything that makes a sound. That should be a good intro into my current state of affairs.

Well, the inaugural session of the Philadelphia Audiophile Society (or whatever we will call ourselves) took place today. By any measure, it appeared to be a rousing success. I for one, had a fantastic time. It was truly rewarding experience to meet such fine people. People who live and breath the the hobby with such obvious passion and commitment.

First things first. Thanks to Rushton for his generosity and skills at being the consumate host. Becoming the locus of the first meeting took courage and grace, both of which he possessed aplenty. Thanks Rush!

The meeting attracted folks with diverse musical tastes. I feel that it will hopefully serve as a vehicle to expand all of our knowledge in the future of both genres and artists. I know that I will be seeking out the featured John Coltrane CD, and will inch into classical with the help of everyone else.

It was clear that this was something that we would all welcome as an activity which continues in the future. Lots of folks hit it off, the conversation was both engaging and lively. One thing I realized was that we are not alone in this area. There are a lot of us out here. I would also venture to guess that there are even more of us around. There are strength in numbers, perhaps our little club will someday come to help its members in some way. There were many ideas thrown on the table for how things might happen in the future. Between the music and the conversation, we probably did not have a chance to forge things out into more crystallized plans. But, I think this forum could potentially serve as a place where each person might submit ideas, and we as a group could come to a consensus.

So, in brief, I would like to state that I spent a perfect Sunday with all of you. How much better can life get when we have great people and music? I hope that this momentum will lead us to more in the future.

Thanks to all who I met today, and again, specifically to Rush.

Nice to meet you all today. Many thanks to Rush. What a wonderful sounding system and I am definitely gonna search out that Lightning Hopkins album! Looking forward to plans for next meeting. -Sandy.

I also wanted to say thank you to all and specifically to Rush, what a great host. The atmosphere was right, the music was wonderful and the conversations were engaging. It was a pleasure to meet all of you and I look forward to our next gathering, hopefully soon.

Regards
Shahen "Sean"