Show Report PiS Fest
composed by Johan Dreyer

This show was held at the Rama Sebo convention centre in Freetown on April 30 and May 1.Unfortunately my kids played with my camera and destroyed the photos.Highlights were:

JBL announced that they were so pleased with the K2 series that they introduced the Anapurna series.Unlike the K2s these will be fully hornloaded and will have elements of the Hartsfield.Prices will be below that of the K2s.Also new will be the Dutch Mountain series ,priced still lower ,but still all horn.These will replace the current Northridge series.According to one Sydney Harman (I presume he works for JBL) he is ".so happy to stop building crap."

Altec Lansing announced that they too will re-enter the home market.Prototypes were shown of the Voice of Music (VoM ) and Voice of Truth (VoTh) ranges.These will feature non ringing sectoral horns built from carbon fibre and kevlar.They will not be available in gray.

TAD had some nice sushi and showed the new 4004 and 2004 compression drivers.These feature diamond diaphragms with durex made suspensions .They also have Alnico IX magnets.Response is said to be flat from 100-100kHz(4004) and 150 -100kHz (2004)

Telex will be making loose drivers available to the industry and enthusiasts.ElectroVoice showed the Romulus series.Both bass and midrange drivers feature field coil drivers.They relaunched the legendary T350 Tweeter for "nuts ".These will be used in the upcoming Wilson Audio WASH.

RCA has announced that they will distribute products made by Drysdale Schell of Beverly Hills.Unusually all speakers will be fitted with remote control allowing the user to adjust magnet strength and surround compliance.

Edgar showed their new electrostatc speaker.Sensitivity is around 50dB/W. According to president Bruce Edgar he is passionate about low sensitivity speakers and can't believe "people fooling around with horns and rubbish like that"

Electronics were quiet this year with only Audio Resaerch showing their new 300B based SET. Krell showed a low powered OTL that, according to company president Daniel d'Agostino, has no bass and will not drive most speakers.

Mark Levinson was seen,but said nothing and denied leaving any companies or starting new ones.

All in all a nice time was had by all .Specially noteworthy was the herbcakes enjoyed by all.

Unfortunately 2 incidents marred the good time-3 if you include running out of cookies. Dr.Amar Bose nearly assualted dr Earl Geddes when the latter claimed his speakers had 99.9% percent better dispersion than anything else.Bose left screaming that only he had the right to use points and that Geddes will hear from his lawyers.

In a related incident,McIntosh announced that they will stop using blue meters on their products as Bose had copyrighted the colour blue.Soon after that the sky clouded over and it startred to rain

Nevertheless we all look forward to next years Pie in the Sky Fest to be held in the school hall on Ascension island

Posted with Johan Dreyer's permission