With Glen having shot some 11'000+ photos to mean a day of work for him just sorting the wheat from the chaff on that count, Frederic Beudot's brief impressions without photos arrived first and here they are accompanied by some of Glen's earlier shots

Frederic: I was able to spend a few hours at TAVES on Sunday. I will be interested in reading Glen's impressions. Here are a few of mine. TAVES this year moved to a new venue still downtown Toronto but the first immediate benefit I saw was the far more accessible parking around the new location. It may seem like a little thing but for a show struggling to reach critical mass, ensuring easier parking—note that I did not say easy, downtown Toronto is challenging at the best of times—was a smart move. I have to say that the Sheraton downtown is a massive conference centre which allowed the show to be split in various sections with different areas of focus. Conceptually that made complete sense. It allowed broadening the scope to hobbies that should speak to the same demographics like photography and graphic arts.

From concept to execution, things did not flow quite as smoothly as maybe was initially envisioned. Let's start with the biggest gaps as I saw them. Audio is actually only my second hobby. I spend more time doing photography. I was really looking forward to a show that would address both of my passions equally. That was a big letdown. Sony was the only company in attendance and although I do have an interest in the truly innovative A7/R/S and was happy to be able to get my hands on them, the completely disengaged Sony reps made that a painful experience. I routinely shoot Canon and Fuji and was really looking forward to getting a feel for their new offers. But no such luck, there was nothing to be found by either of these companies or from Nikon (I don't own any Nikon gear but I would have loved to shoot a few frames with the new D810).

Thus half of what got me excited to return to TAVES this year was in the end MIA. In exchange though there was a chance to interact with 3D printing companies putting out small plastic toys - not my cup of tea but maybe that was a big draw for younger audiences (although there was not much going on there on Sunday). We were also offered the opportunity to watch live body painting on half-naked young women. That might be the right way to attract new demographics to our hobby but it just felt awkward although not as in your face as when CES shared dates and location with the Adult Entertainment show in Vegas. Maybe that's where the idea came from. Graphic arts also seemed a little orphaned and I did not find anything that caught my eye. But that's my problem and purely a matter of taste. I am sure there were lots of people who found displays which they enjoyed. All in all, it felt that there is a valuable place for graphic arts in the show but it might come off better integrated as opposed to stand alone on the side. Photography was a huge missed opportunity. All of my photography friends have some level of involvement in hifi but this first attempt was a miss.

In the end it was an audio show with not so well-executed attempts at expanding. On the audio side I found the sound not as engaging as in the old location. Acoustics were either dry or boomy. I heard nothing in between. Obvious was the absence of many of the smaller players who had attended in the past, either small retailers or small manufacturers. In effect the majority were big mainstream exhibitors which meant a lot of the same sound: highly defined, highly sterile, highly disengaged. So a few kudos to Tidal/Reimyo who had the only listenable top dollar room; AudioNote Kit, Harbeth HL5 plus, Focus and Charisma Audio for putting together rooms that made beautiful music and did not overload their space and their neighbours. Most obnoxious exhibitor goes to the small room with a full esoteric complement driving Sonus Faber Aida to bombastic output which could be heard not only in the neighbouring rooms but two or three rooms down the hall.

If from these comments you feel that this may have been my last year attending, you are probably right unless things change significantly next year.