As the pagan rituality requires, this year, as always, in the frightening rooms of that wing of the Enterprise ship which is called Quark Hotel, that - ever more Celtic - festivity called Top Audio took place. An amazing (keeping the general situation in mind, I would be tempted to say really amazing, almost overwhelming) number of visitors, coming from the remote parts of the Galaxy, crowded around the shouting metal and the crying wood (willow?) generously handed over by manufacturers and distributors on five plans of this "happy Eighties" building. In orderly and ethnically grouped rows, it was possible to observe all known typologies of audiophile: the easy ones, the surprised, the cynics, the depressed, people who "I put the head just inside of the door, I stretch one ear and I decide, as soon as that, that I don't like it", the euphoric ones, people who "I do better than that myself", the freaks, the jazz maniacs, the pidgeonians, the Germanophiles, the Anglophiles, the warmongerers, the chaste and the sinner. As always, almost zero women. To compensate, a number of porn magazines full of photographs of naked amplifiers and of loudspeakers portrayed during unimaginable sexual intercourses with improbable electronics of all varieties. Demonstrations and stages: "Who was born first, the hen or the egg?", "Live vs. Reproduced", "Live vs. Death", "Live vs. Live", "Live and Let Die", "Live at Leeds" and so on. Thanks to the liberal customs of the show, and given the superposition of irreconcilable topics, such as video and audio, devil and holy water, no-caffeine coffee and cask-strength whisky, amphetamines and tranquilisers, sometimes, at the +1 floor (and you, which floor do you live at? I have discovered I live at the +3, flat B12, cruiser sunk) epic and cruel fights between audiophiles and visionaries took place. The first ones, attracted by the cannon shots coming from the subwoofers, or coming there in order to leave wife and children before a Star Wars projection, and be able to put on the white raincoat uniform and masturbate in front of a Vyger turntable, the second ones looking for the Great 3-Tubes and hoping that in one of the rooms the "Vercellian Housewives at the Plumbers World Convention" movie was being shown.

The Vulcanian Audiophile

Between the infinite number of audiophile varieties which, this year too, adorned the corridors and rooms with their bird songs and their million dollar questions, there was quite a massive presence of Vulcanian audiophiles. The Vulcanian audiophile, quite calm and reserved in his environment, in captivity denotes a tendency to scratch his lower left buttock and to pompously pronounce incredible bullshit. Deprived of every love and sentiment - normally, he is promised to an '86 vintage Audio Research and hates children -, he can be recognised by his cheap dress (a factor that is not correlated with his social status) and by the heap of booklets under his sweaty armpit. He generally enters the listening rooms abruptly, sits at the centre of the third row (when there are only two rows, he stands on a leg like a stork), tends his neck forward, listens for 15 to 18 seconds to the current record and proclaims "it's obvious it sounds like caca, the left cable between preamp and power amp has an oxidised connector pin terminal". If the exhibitor doesn't throw him out on the spot, or if he doesn't convince him to enter the bathroom, where he's going to be beaten to death by the other people in the room, he normally has a good success. It's easy to tell where the Vulcanian has been, as in the corridor leading to the room where he entered, a sudden stirring can be noticed: it's the depressed audiophiles, who, pushed by the vibrant words the Vulcanian proffered, have finally found the nerve to say what they really think: "we think it's obvious it sounds like caca, it is evident to us that the left cable between preamp and power amp has an oxidised connector pin terminal".

The blind visionary

The delicious counterpart to the Vulcanian audiophile is the blind visionary. Scientific definition notwithstanding, there's really little relationship with the Greek poet. He doesn't rhyme, he doesn't play the lyre (taking for granted that the poet did), he doesn't speak a word in classic Greek (not that he's too strong in modern Italian). As he knows by heart all of the three DVDs which are being shown to the public, he enters the room almost furtively, and sits in the front row at first; then, as the subwoofer he mistook for a turned off back projector pushes him against the back wall shouting a John Williams soundtrack, he settles on a less central position, he sits down, and he CLOSES HIS EYES! (that's true, I have seen it), and moves his lips mimicking Liam Neeson's part; when he gets out of the room, he abruptly stops the first guy he meets and he shouts (he always shouts, as he lost the learning remote control two years ago, and he is firmly convinced that people is whispering and that the normal acoustic level is that of the LA roads chase in Robocop 2) "the black level was horrible"; normally, the unlucky guy answers that he knows nothing about politics, or that the visionary is a racist..

Ladies and Gentlemen: the Show!

Badmouthing the sound of the Top Audio rooms is just as shooting the red cross while the driver is replacing a tyre. Everybody who has ever been to the Milan show more than once knows that those unadorned rooms can sound really bad; so a report like this has to show the new products rather than deal with the sound of the rooms. It must be said, however, that, year after year, some of the exhibitors have learned that it's necessary to work hard in these rooms, and that, working hard, it's even possible to be able to make something already decent sound in a decent way. Congratulations to these exhibitors, and absolutely not to those who keep on arriving the day before the opening one, and throw casually four products together, convinced that audiophiles different from the "wizard audiophile" (we will talk about this odd and common species another time) are able to find something interesting in the annoying noises produced by what they, bombastically, call "systems". One thing to be noticed is the definitive affirmation of the German school, long overlooked and now almost excessively appreciated, the definitive return of the analogue systems (and the monumentalisation, not always functional, of the turntables) and the evident impossibility, with some rare and notable exception, to set up a multichannel system correctly, as if a badly sounding system would sell better. Lower in number, but higher in quality, was the presence of national exhibitors, with products which are sometimes really interesting, to prove that, once the juvenile enthusiasms and the assaults to the far east markets have come to an end, a creative way has taken place, as it's not possible to make a living only out of precious woods. Some pictures of the things we liked follows. Too many were the ones we didn't like. Bad news for Western and traditional Eastern manufacturers: the "yellow danger" is here. The Chinese manufacturers have entered the high-end stage, with very interesting products and, as it was predictable, really low prices. An old joke: "President Mao is waken up in the middle of the night: Comrade Mao, Switzerland has declared war to us! Oh, I see: which is their hotel?" Think about the joke. Necessary foreword: the writer is present at the Top Audio since the first edition, so he knows everything, without being too self assured, about the acoustics of the Quark Hotel. The choice of the pictures is based on this knowledge. Some explanation about those Italian manufacturers which are possibly unknown to the international public is provided.

Absolute Sound

Absolute Sound		Rondò 022

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