Signals 005
There is something wonderfully excessive about an audio show. For a few days, you can wander from room to room and hear systems you might otherwise never encounter. Behind each door, someone has assembled their idea of how music should sound.
I enjoy this enormously.
As I prepare to head to Warsaw, I am looking forward to the familiar names, of course. But a large part of the attraction lies with the smaller companies. The unfamiliar names on the doors. The people whose work I have yet to discover.
There is something compelling about hearing a system in the presence of the person who built it. You can ask a question and find out why a particular decision mattered to them. What began as an unusual-looking loudspeaker or an unfamiliar amplifier becomes someone’s work.
Sometimes, you can hear just how much it matters to them. Occasionally, it makes you stay much longer than intended.
Warsaw has given me encounters like this before. Small, largely unknown companies whose systems made me stop and listen. I remember the pleasure of finding something I would probably never have sought out, simply because I did not know it existed.
That is a good reason to keep opening doors.
Looking back over the years, I notice that many of the systems that have stayed with me were rooted in older ideas. Horn loudspeakers. Full-range drivers. Valve amplifiers. Different combinations, different rooms, but on several occasions an encounter that genuinely moved me. I felt unusually close to the music.
I find that worth paying attention to. It tells me something about my own listening, about the qualities I respond to and perhaps about the experiences that have shaped my taste.
It also makes me curious about the people working with these ideas today. What did they hear that made them want to pursue this particular path? What have they kept, reconsidered or made their own? Hearing their work gives me a way into that conversation.
I arrive in Warsaw with those experiences in mind, curious to discover what will move me this time.
The music people choose can tell you a great deal. A surprising choice can make a room feel immediately more inviting. You become curious about the person who chose it. A conversation starts. You leave with the name of an artist you want to hear again.
There are also moments when I would love to bring something of my own into that conversation.
A familiar song. Something I have lived with. Something that belongs to my musical world and that I suddenly want to hear through this particular system.
That is not always possible. Some exhibitors welcome requests; others prefer to stay with their programme. There may be good reasons. But when a system has caught my attention, that wish to hear my own music feels like a natural next step. I am beginning to imagine a connection between what someone has made and what matters to me.
For the moment, that connection remains a possibility.
Perhaps this is why certain encounters stay with us after a show. We have heard enough to become curious. We want more time, another conversation, another listen.
At home, that curiosity has room to develop. A system gradually finds its place among the albums we return to, the music friends introduce us to and the discoveries that send us in unexpected directions. We learn what it brings to an ordinary evening. We find ourselves listening longer than planned.
That relationship takes time. Yet its beginning may be a few minutes in an unfamiliar room, with someone else choosing the music.
That is how I want to approach Warsaw. With curiosity, with enthusiasm and with enough room for something unexpected to happen. I hope to hear extraordinary systems. I hope some small, unfamiliar company makes me forget the time. I would also be delighted to come home with music I did not know before.
And if a particular system stays in my thoughts afterwards, I will want to hear it again.
Perhaps with a few records of my own.
Soul of Sound. A way of listening.
