The usual HiFi and Home Theater Show in Milan, the Top Audio & Video 2001, grows a little bit this year, thanks to the increased number of exhibitors: 95 instead of 93! :-)
Among these 35 are audio-only (they were 30 last year), 50 of the audio-video gang and 20 represent the audiophile labels and publications.
The main good news for us audiophiles is that the audio expositors will be placed FAR from the Home Theater rooms, so, perhaps, it will be possible to listen to some good Music without explosions, earthquakes and the like.
The Show will take place, as usual, at the Quark Hotel, Via Lampedusa 11A, in Milan, from 13rd to 17th of September (opening hours: 9:30 am - 7:00 pm). A minibus will take the visitors from the Famagosta subway station till the Quark Hotel.
For the first time TNT-Audio won't publish a reportage from the event. We will visiting the Show but we are not going to publish anything regarding it. There are many reasons for this and I'll try to explain you some.
First of all, the organizers of the milanese event have set up a kind of "live" coverage via the support of an Italian AudioVideo magazine (AF Digitale). It is very difficult, if not impossible, to beat the kind of service they can offer, since they are commercial and we humbly non-profit.
Secondly, this "live" reportage is a kind of "official" one, in the sense that it is developed in agreement with the organizers. This will avoid some trouble the organizers have had with our past reportages. Two years ago, for example, we published a couple of pictures of HiFi components which were exposed and demo'ed (for everyone to see) without the permission from the organizers.
Funny and weird as it can be, the organizers went crazy with us because we reported something that everyone could see but that was not allowed by them.
This caused a lot of gossip (here in Italy) and the organizers violently attacked us via their web site, where they wrote our reportages weren't nor good neither "professional".
Of course they were NOT ;-), we simply (and FREELY) reported what everyone visiting the Show could see. We had NO MEANS to tell who was demoing "legally" and who not.
You can imagine our reaction. Just consider the kind of popularity our reportages brought to the Top Audio & Video Show. Actually, our English-edition reportages LITERALLY made the World aware of the Milan expo. Years later, other leading international magazines reported something from the Italian Show. The first one that comes to my mind is Steve Rochlin's EnjoyTheMusic.
So, to cut a long story short, considering that 1) our reportages have been judged negatively by the organizers, 2) they were quite expensive for us in terms of money (plane tickets, hotels, restaurants etc.) and spare time, and 3) the Show is already supplied with an excellent OFFICIAL "live" coverage (not to mention the fantastic work by Steve Rochlin for non-Italian readers), we see NO REASON to go on publishing reportages from the Show.
It is a sad decision, since we have to break quite a long tradition but that's life, dudes.
You publish something FOR FREE (spending a lot of money and spare time to put it online), then you get trashed and flamed by the guys who benefit (in terms of FREE worldwide advertising) from it...and that's how the fun definitely ends.
We are deeply sorry for the expositors who, thanks to our reportages, have received a huge amount of FREE worldwide advertising. Let's put this straight: many of them (Italian ones, I mean) would have never made it abroad, without us.
Also, we are deeply sorry for you, faithful readers worldwide, because you will probably miss a reportage from one of the leading Italian HiFi Shows.
Don't cry too loud though, because the content of the Show itself has substantially moved towards Home Theater and Multimedia, so we see no reason to publish a reportage of, say, 30 HiFi-only rooms. To me, it appears more like a "body count" (who survived this year?) than a reportage.
Finally, it seems other online mags will not report on the Top Audio & Video because the Italian event takes place the same days of the London HiFi Show. What a pity.
For more infos on the Top Audio & Video 2001 visit the official APAF site, the association of Italian HiFi Companies and distributors that organizes the Show.
© Copyright 2001 Lucio Cadeddu - http://www.tnt-audio.com