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Cranage 2023

Mullardman said:
Without getting between those merrily scrapping above...
- I heard a range of music, from all genres.
- My pal and I both noted more women, more kids, more young adults, more racial diversity than previously seen.
-I also noted the obligatory fat bloke in the doorway, as well as the three moderately fat, beardy, agitated blokes blocking the corridor oblivious to those trying to pass.
-also the many polite, helpful, normal, jovial people. One couple, possibly older than my 74 years, offered to 'escort' me down some stairs as I was struggling a bit due to cumulative fatigue. Not needed, but appreciated for the thoughtfulness. Many others step aside or hold doors open politely. .. .and not just because they spot a walking stick, or detect a bit of age.
Civility, good manners and a common interest in progress.. Govt. take note..
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Did that include hip-hop then?
 
Mike Hughes said:
This is the first Cranage I have missed so I’m fully aware of what the general experience is. I absolutely stand by my original post and would ask anyone who wants to comment on it further to point out the specific bullet points which made points which are inaccurate. I don’t think anyone can as even a casual flick through the video bears the points out explicitly.

Point by point:

- bunch of overwhelmingly white middle aged blokes showing stuff to… white middle aged blokes. All that angst about the future of high end audio has clearly been overplayed. By all means highlight the equal number of women and non-white faces present.
- the headphone section where there was a significant drop off in numbers because the younger demographic who actually do have an interest weren’t in attendance. Zero people under the age of fifty visible at any point.
- the utter idiocy of using display banners behind speakers and systems both from a sound perspective and the rather basic perspective of wanting to read the damn things. Multiple examples of this throughout the video.
- the number of display banners which were in fact unreadable regardless because some design genius thought a tiny scripted font and lots of words was a great idea. Hardly reassures in terms of the design/marketing credential for certain products and definitely misunderstands that your audience is white middle aged blokes with ageing eyesight. Again, multiple examples.
- the number of rooms wanting to make a song and dance about source, amplification, DACs, speakers, stands and cables instead of simplifying the system and saying “this is the product we think you should look at/listen to”. It’s just so basic. In the end you leave with a false impression because you don’t know why something is good or terrible or indifferent. Clearly a harder one to illustrate but also not a difficult impression to form.
- old complaint but, goodness, the music is awful. Weirdly the white middle aged blokes presenting the products will probably disagree but then these are the same people who constantly fail to notice the lack of diversity or wilder at their role in that.
- the same fat bloke stood in multiple doorways blocking egress. Bravo. You are the show cliche to end all sh-w cliches. Watch the video. Irrefutable.
- the lighting within rooms. Apparently “harsh” is the only achievable outcome. If I lit my system like that I’d be blind within the week. Ditto. Irrefutable.

I’ve no issue with people disagreeing with posts but FFS have some actual basis for doing so.
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TL;DR

As you say, FFS. Maybe you are a bit grumpy because you couldn’t make it this year. Although based on your critique, I’m not sure what would attract you to do so!

Despite your points, I’m not sure anyone regretss going or would hesitate before doing so again. For balance and all that.

Peace and love.
 
Mullardman said:
Aaahh. Now there you have me, because I can't distinguish the many subgenres of recent 'mobo',dance, etc, type music and it does not interest me . But I heard something like it and moved swiftly on...
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Hip hop is a genre which grew up in the late 70s and 80s on the US East Coast, especially New York. It is characterised by relentless lurching drum machine beats, a DJ playing excerpts from old records ('samples') forwards and backwards by hand rhythmically ('scratching' for obvious reasons), and rapping which means talking in rhyme and often bragging aggressively in a percussive way in time with the music and not bothering to sing melody. The genre is also associated with break dancing, a kind of dancing which combines feats of acrobatic prowess with mime illusions and swaggering gestures. It has sold quite a lot of records and made a diverse group of people very rich.

Hope that helps.

Here's an example:

 
Thanks for taking the trouble to define hip hop. I sort of knew that, but as I said there seem to be many sub genres/ developments etc, etc, which I know all but nothing about.
Maybe similar to the way many younger people really don't 'get' the subtleties of 60s soul/ Motown/Stax/Atlantic stuff etc. As in when I recently heard the Drifters described as 'Motown'....:rolleyes:.
But it doesn't matter. 'Hip hop doesn't 'move' me and that's my only tests of music..but if it makes you happy...
 
Tony L said:
FWIW the original 12” single of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s The Message (Discogs) is one of the best sounding records in my collection. That thing kicks like a beast, a huge, huge sounding record! I could sell hi-fi all day long with it!
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I had a mate who ran the record dept in a large independent music retailer (musical instruments, TVs and even a 'proper' hifi dept at one time).

Every now and again he'd insist I buy something without debate, this was one of his 'brook no argument' recommendations. He introduced me to Tom Waits, Frank Zappa and Ry Cooder, so his track record was pretty good, enough for me to overlook his Springsteen obsession and my suspicion they had a stock room full of Elvis Costello's country album.
 
Anyone listen to the Pink Floyd demo outside, i never got the timing right so kept missing it, enjoyed the show overall, my first Cranage but will go again, everyone we came into contact with was polite, helpful and understanding of my disabled brothers slow movement and he never managed to upend anyone with his stick so result.
Thanks to all who displayed, the highlights for me were Doug Brady's rooms where those YG Acoustics sounded magnificent and offered the opportunity to look at and hear other top end stuff way above my pay grade.
Other highlights included the Polish integrated with those panel speakers, very nice and the Tannoys (thanks for the Haribo's)
The ATC actives with the Auralic streamer/pre was a bit of a let down, sounded nice but as a sum of parts rather than a whole, just not coherent whether that was the speakers or the Auralic or the combination who knows.
New model PMC's in the Fanthorpes room sounded nice, what they give away to the Twenty 5's at their respective price points would be interesting to hear.
The Innuos room was rather good, kept the music flowing with 2 minute samples of different genres, paired with some KEF Meta's sounded very nice.
Managed to secure some nice discount codes for products to buy after the show and apologies to the Atacama guy, we had to leave you in the end as your location meant we were blocking the way for others, unfortunately you were a victim of your own popularity but will be buying a stand anyway so job done and thanks for all the info.
One major shock for me was all the new Naim gear running through those large KEFs, they managed to make Gregory Porter sound like he was auditioning for a heavy metal band, the attack was way OTT and painful to the ears after only a short while.
The Ophidians being powered by the Exposure 3510 set up including the NAITS (yet) CD player was a major diappointment.
The new Quad stuff sounded very promising, would have liked more time with this but we had to move on.
We also met Tarun, a bit of a hero of my brother's as they both own the Expo 18 mono's, he was every bit as engaging in real life as he is on his YT channel, top bloke.
Obviously everyone has their own take on these things and attends for different reasons but overall we found the level of organisation, the catering, car parking and number, variety and commitment of the exhibitors to be first class.
 
TheFlash said:
TL;DR

As you say, FFS. Maybe you are a bit grumpy because you couldn’t make it this year. Although based on your critique, I’m not sure what would attract you to do so!

Despite your points, I’m not sure anyone regretss going or would hesitate before doing so again. For balance and all that.

Peace and love.
Click to expand...

You have to love people on the internet. No-one can post some points which are clearly borne out by the video to which they refer without there being something else going on. It can never just be that you have posted something factual. There has to be an ulterior motive or a problem or an underlying issue.

Having an opinion which does not chime with the consensus should never be a problem unless that opinion can be demonstrated to be factually wrong. Where you’re not expressing an opinion but referring to nothing but factual stuff borne out by a video the length of a film then people having a problem with that and trying to find some underlying motive simply demonstrates that those posters struggle when information which runs counter factual to their experience.

Several people commenting haven’t watched the video. Several have said “well it didn’t look like that for me” with regard to specific points. Fair enough. However, the audio press have long since recognised problems with shows in terms of presentation, process, diversity etc. and frankly “it was great for me” will never change that. How about wondering what it might look like for people who didn’t attend or for others that did instead of responding so simplistically.

It is not for example my “opinion” that many display banners were unreadable; hidden by products, people or other furniture. It is a hard “fact”. If I did that at a work event to which I took banners it would be picked up on the event evaluation and I’d likely be asked to change it. Now, if you were there and you didn’t notice that, which is forgivable, then fair enough. It doesn’t stop it being a fact or being a problem for others who attended etc.
 
US3 - Hand On the Torch.

De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising.

Dream Warriors - And Now the Legacy Begins.

A Tribe Called Quest - People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.
 
My take away faves - Kii (best in show award imo). Kerr Acoustics sublime, new PMCs were really good. ATCs 'realistically painful' in a good way.
My take away dissapointments - coherent audio (worst value in show award), most of the music was plinky plink shit. The AV room was putting out some movie bass that was simply annoying.

Cranage as a venue, great, organisation and greeting superb. Bristol could learn a thing or two from this. Also spotted Tarun 'A British Audiophile' and he said hello to me, which was nice.:)
 
Couldn't make it in the end, unfortunately. Looked a good 'un.

I remember saying to the guy I was with at the last show the exhibitors should all agree to play the same the same album at the same time so you can skim between the rooms and get a sense of the actual differences. Yeah Rumours - or at least something relatable and not the plinky-plonky/unknown-breathy-female stuff. Could also be a disaster with rooms bleeding in to one another with a few seconds' delay between, but worth a try.
 
The problem with relying on a video as your representation of ‘truth’ is that you don’t know how it was edited, nor whether there was any bias, unconscious or otherwise, in the editing. If you wanted to ‘show’ that this was just a show for middle aged white blokes, that’d be trivially easy to do in a video. Somewhat harder to ‘show’ that the event was hugely diverse and inclusive, but not impossible. Just relies on careful editing.

So if you say ‘just watch the ****ing video and you’ll see my point’, if somebody else responds ‘that doesn’t chime with my experience’, it’s probably best not to call them a twerp just because what they describe isn’t on the video.
 
Mike Hughes said:
Credit re: the video. That was an excellent and informative watch. Wish I could have been there in one sense but in another it absolutely confirmed stuff we’ve previously discussed about shows.

- bunch of overwhelmingly white middle aged blokes showing stuff to… white middle aged blokes. All that angst about the future of high end audio has clearly been overplayed :).
- the headphone section where there was a significant drop off in numbers because the younger demographic who actually do have an interest weren’t in attendance.
- the utter idiocy of using display banners behind speakers and systems both from a sound perspective and the rather basic perspective of wanting to read the damn things.
- the number of display banners which were in fact unreadable regardless because some design genius thought a tiny scripted font and lots of words was a great idea. Hardly reassures in terms of the design/marketing credential for certain products and definitely misunderstands that your audience is white middle aged blokes with ageing eyesight.
- the number of rooms wanting to make a song and dance about source, amplification, DACs, speakers, stands and cables instead of simplifying the system and saying “this is the product we think you should look at/listen to”. It’s just so basic. In the end you leave with a false impression because you don’t know why something is good or terrible or indifferent.
- old complaint but, goodness, the music is awful.
- the same fat bloke stood in multiple doorways blocking egress. Bravo. You are the show cliche to end all sh-w cliches.
- the lighting within rooms. Apparently “harsh” is the only achievable outcome. If I lit my system like that I’d be blind within the week.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I don’t accept any of your points as valid - here’s why:
1/ criticising an audio show for being predominantly white, middle aged, men is a cheap shot - all a show can do is represent the demographic interested in the subject.
2/ the headphone room was quieter because it takes ages to have a proper listen to a number of headphones. I listened to three (could have been four) and I was in there for forty minutes. Also, you are quite wrong to imagine that ‘young’ people are only interested in headphones. I would also add that the cheapest headphone combo I listened to was £900.00.
3/ there is no issue with the banners in terms of sound and when one was actually there they were easy enough to read - you can always look a little closer…
4/ as at many shows, some rooms were being run (paid for) my manufacturers. If you make speakers, for example, it is hardly in your interest to promote the rest of the system!
5/ the music was far more varied than usual for shows. Also, you can always ask for specific tracks and most rooms were happy to oblige. Of course there was music I disliked but that’s inevitable. I’ve been to shows where it’s been nothing but Dire Straits and ****y Jazz.
6/ you aren’t obliged to follow a fat bloke about and such individuals were very much in the minority - rather a bizarre criticism.
7/ in reality there was nothing wrong with the lighting - it was the middle of a bright sunny day after all.
 
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Tony L said:
FWIW the original 12” single of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s The Message (Discogs) is one of the best sounding records in my collection. That thing kicks like a beast, a huge, huge sounding record! I could sell hi-fi all day long with it!
Click to expand...

Completely OT but anyone with an appreciation of rap needs to spend some time on YouTube listening to current UK rap and drill. I realise I'm about 30 years too old and don't have any great knowledge of the music but I can listen to tracks like this over and over!

 
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