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Originally posted by pinkmouse Okay guys, my thoughts as they currently stand.
Firstly, I think we need to keep this first event relatively simple. We can always expand for next year, but I would like to grow based on a sound footing.
So, I suggest we use Ant's Chesterfield venue this time around. York sounds great, but once we get into using a venue like that, things get complicated, i.e. insurance, security, tailoring the programme to suit their needs etc. Maybe next time.
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Sounds fine to me Al and since there's interest then I'll flesh the details out a little more.
I'll drop in tomorrow and get some photo's taken to give folks an idea of what to expect. I'll say now that its spartan and basic since its really a community building run by a charity on a tight budget. It is however a well maintained and clean but well used grade 2 listed building that used to be the local school back in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The facilities include a kitchen, male and female toilets as well as a food preperation area that ajoins all three rooms.
The main hall is wood panel flooring and very high vaulted ceilings and the smaller hall is pretty much a similar construction. The L shaped lounge area is carpetted with much lower ceilings. Overall its more suited to serious listening and pretty much the perfect size to allow speakers to breath well away from walls but no so large as swallow up standmounts. Its possibly big enough to run two setups in there, obviously not at the same time but the option is there anyway.
The building has plenty of chairs and tables that we can make use of as well as other basic things such as a couple of fridges/freezers, microwave, kettle, glasses and cups and so on.
When it comes to options for food, well we're spoilt for choice really. Pizza Hut, Domino's and a raft of Greek, Indian and Chinese fast food places that will do delivery. Straight over the road from the club is a fish and chips place, a newsagent and a Spar supermarket. Alternatively we can book and go out for a meal, there's a really nice Italian place I know if the masses like that sort of thing, there's also a decent hotel/pub called the Olde House that does nice food just a couple of minutes drive or about a 15 minute walk from the club.
Here's a quick map showing the location of Hotels relative to the venue:
Red is the venue. Green are the hotels:
1 = Olde House
I mentioned this one above as a possible place for a meal, its also a hotel too. Its within walking distance of the club(about 15 minutes). Bit more info on that here:
http://www.infotel.co.uk/10117
2 = Travel Lodge
Don't really know much about this one. Its about 5 minutes away in the car.
http://www.travelodge.co.uk/find_a_h...1/Chesterfield
3 = Travel Inn
There's also the Travel Inn, which is about 10 minutes drive away. I had friends stay in this one over new year and they said it was really nice, I do know it has a family pub attached to it too:
http://www.premiertravelinn.com/pti/...?hotelId=24048
4 = You tell me 
And finally there's another one but the name escapes me, it is however about 15 minutes away and situated very close to Chesterfield town center and is also close to the train and bus stations. I'll find out what its called and post details.
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So, how do we do it. I suggest we start with a 1 1/2 day programme, kicking off at lunchtime on a Saturday, and all day Sunday. The small room will have maybe three booked events, the Marantz CD showdown looks like one possible, maybe a chip amp session, I'm sure we can add more as we go along. The rest of the time we can organise some informal auditions and listening.
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Sounds good, the lounge would be the best choice for more serious listening.
If we do have it over here then it would be feasible to bring along my next design and this room would be ideal to really stretch its legs so I'll really pull my backside out and try and get the Tarantism's finished in time for this event, most likely will be bare MDF enclosures but it'd be nice to get some feedback on them:
I'd like to maybe see a cable test of some kind just because I've still yet to hear any real differences between differing types, would be nice to explore that a bit more.
I also really enjoy auditioning amps so the more of those the better, especially if someone brings along class D, class A, class AB and some tube flavour too. I'll bring along whatever I have at the time.
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The medium size room will have a demo/mucking around area, with perhaps a couple of presentations, (if we can find willing volunteers), along with swap tables, and if I can get them, a couple of trade tables as well. Normally, traders pay a concession fee to sell, but this time around, as it is a new event, I may just see if we can get a couple of door prizes out of them.
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I've got a projector which I'll be happy to do a PCXO, FIR filtering and DRC demonstation on. Others could also bring along photo's, slideshows or whatever else that runs on a PC to show on the big screen.
Would be nice if someone could teach us more about passive XO design too.
Speaking of the projector - if there's enough demand I could bring along the KEF Reference 5.1 setup, my screen and do a cinema setup so we could watch a movie at some point. Got plenty of 720 progressive high def material with suitably overblown soundtracks. Could even use the same setup for a bit of big screen PC gaming.
Just throwing ideas around.
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The big hall will be set up as a test suite, so people can bring along their own kit for measuring, with a rota of volunteers manning the PC, (Ant and Vikash come to mind for that duty!  ). Of course, if the weather is good, we could set up outside for a sub shootout as well.
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Yep if someone wants to bring along drivers for TS testing or maybe others want a rough idea of how how their speakers measure - not a problem. I think between me Vik we'd have virtually every type of measurement covered using a fairly extensive range of programs.
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A date. I suggest around the end of July, beginning of August.
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That's perfect actually as its in the summer holidays plus we should be having good weather then.
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edit: I could do an introductory guide to Eagle if people want.
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Eagle? What's that Al?
What we really need is plenty of kit there of all types, I'll bring what I can but we'd soon get bored of that unless we have a good variety, commercial stuff certainly welcome as it would make for interesting comparisons! So really don't be shy about what you bring. Personally speaking I'd like to see speakers, amps and cables, the more the better. But the thing that all of us would be most interested in is others music collections, I love listening to something that I've never heard before and even stuff that might not be quite to our taste can often be a real eye opener and there's also the chance that we'll get hooked on something completely new
PS. We ought to compile a list of the stuff folks might bring to give us an idea of how we can better shape the demos and sessions. I think the worst thing we could do is turn up with a load of kit and then just hap-hazzardly swap bits without any direction. I think that would likely be pretty unfulling for most.
