Hi-fi shows, Capital Audiofest, and the Doshi Evolution Phono

I was heading back home to New York in my old Mercedes diesel on a Sunday evening, having just attended the annual Capital Audiofest near Washington, DC. Riding shotgun was fellow Stereophile scribbler Ken Micallef, and as we puttered along the straight, featureless lower half of the New Jersey Turnpike, we started to reminisce about our audio show experiences.

- BY MICHAEL TREI

My first audio event was the 1973 hi-fi show in Brussels, Belgium, held at the massive Brussels Exhibition Centre, near the famous Atomium landmark. Today, it's hard to imagine a hi-fi show big enough to fill a huge convention center, but back then, audio was big business. My dad had pretty much zero interest in audio equipment, but he recognized my passion and indulged my 11-year-old self by taking me to the show. Standouts I remember to this day include the Nakamichi 1000 cassette deck, which proved that cassette decks were more than just repurposed dictation machines, and a Dual display that had a playing turntable mounted in a rotating jig that flipped the turntable on its side and even upside down without causing it to skip a groove. This taught me the benefits of a dynamically balanced tonearm.

Fast forward about 15 years. After moving back to New York from London, I was just getting my start in the audio business, working at Andy Singer's high-end store in Manhattan. Back then, there was only one American hi-fi show that really mattered, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). To be a bit more accurate, it was two shows, because back then there were two Consumer Electronics Shows each year, the Summer CES in June in Chicago, and the Winter CES in January in Las Vegas. The main event for what the CES people liked to call “specialty audio” was the summer show in Chicago. High-end audio exhibitors were spread out among classic old hotels like The Americana Congress, The Palmer House, and The Blackstone, all on or close to Michigan Avenue, while the big mainstream companies—Sony, Panasonic—took over the nearby McCormick Place Convention Center.