Hi Tim,
Heres the letter.
Gateway Audio Society
GAS was founded by several local audiophiles a little more than 2 years ago. We “found” each other through various audio related websites. As the core group began to meet to share their interests, we decided to create a club or society so that we could seek out more audiophiles in the greater St Louis area. As word got around, other local audiophiles began to attend the local GAS events. For audiophiles, finding a fellow audio “nut” is like an epiphany. We seem to be few and far between.
Since it’s founding, GAS has grown to over 30 members whose hobby is music and audio gear. Unlike today’s homogenized interpretation of an ‘audiophile’ being a music lover, the true audiophile is passionate about the accurate reproduction of recorded sound. The recorded sounds can be on Compact Discs, SACD’s (Super Audio Compact Discs), DVD Audio Discs, or believe it or not, Vinyl LP’s (33 1/3 RPM records). The systems that are used for the playback are usually stereo’s rather than the newer technology 5.1 speaker surround systems though many of our members have both. The vast majority of the GAS members have dedicated listening rooms that hold their stereo equipment, music and usually loads of music memorabilia.
Our membership consists of people from every walk of life. We have Architects, Engineers, Casino Dealers, Lawyers, Musicians, Electricians, Music Educators, Symphony members, Technicians and many trades in between. Our members all live in and around the Gateway City with a fairly even split between Missouri and Illinois residents. We even have members that come down for events from as far away as Springfield Illinois and Mark Twain Lake in northern Missouri.
The Gateway Audio Society meets on a semi-regular basis. We try to meet at least every other month. These ‘gatherings’ are usually held at one of the members homes. We get together and listen to new and interesting pieces of audio equipment and we share new finds in music. The audio gear can be anything from speakers to amplifiers to CD players and everything in between. On occasion, we even have manufacturers give demonstrations of their creations. Several of our members have actually built some wonderful sounding gear from scratch.
Often, GAS meetings involve auditioning a new piece of equipment that has been shipped by the manufacturer to various audio groups around the world for their audition and comment on
www.audiocircle.com, which hosts 10 audio groups from Australia to New England. We also try to do several outings each year to hear live music, tour local audio stores to hear the new model lines, or hear GAS members perform in such esteemed local organizations such as the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, Bach Society of St. Louis, and the St. Louis Wind Symphony. One recent outing included a “record store crawl” where members hopped from one local vinyl outlet to the next in search of those rare LP’s that aren’t available on CD.
One of the more interesting things of note regarding audiophiles falls along the lines of “what’s old is new again.” To be more specific, old technology has made a dramatic comeback in recent years. Vacuum tubes used to be the only means of amplification from the early 1900’s until the emergence of the transistor in the mid to late 1960’s. With the onset of the transistor, stereo equipment became more compact and cheaper to manufacture than tube equipment, the result being the death knell of tube amplification (almost). Starting in the mid to late 1990’s vacuum tubes began to reemerge as the favored means of amplification for the true audiophile. Today, there are more tube equipment manufacturers in business than ever before. (Oddly enough, while tube driven stereo equipment virtually vanished by the 70’s, tube guitar amps remained the king of the rock world and are still the preference of rock guitarists today.)
The same can be said for vinyl records. Even though vinyl hasn’t been in your local music store for well over 15 years, new vinyl is being mass produced and sold over the internet. It surprises most people to find out that some of the newest releases from their favorite artists are available in their vinyl counterpart and released at the same time as the CD. There are many, many releases that are constantly sold out because the demand is so high that the pressing plants can’t keep up. I’d venture to say that there are more choices in turntables today than there are choices in CD players. The rumors that you hear are true. Vinyl does sound better than a CD when played on a truly accurate audio system.
The resurgence of vinyl and tube equipment are primarily due to a small subculture of audiophiles who refused to accept the mass market equipment being promoted by the big box super stores today. Audiophiles appreciate the superior sound quality of this type of equipment and support a plethora of mostly small, cottage industry manufacturers who strive to meet these exacting standards.
If you enjoy hearing new music or are simply interested in improving the sound of your home stereo system, the Gateway Audio Society is the place for you. It’s a great place to meet new friends, open your mind to new music, listen to music presented in breath-taking realism, and have fun all at the same time.
The Gateway Audio Society can be found at GatewayAudioSociety.com. We also have a discussion forum where we keep in touch and that can be found at
www.audiocircle.com . When you surf in, click on the Circles tab at the top of the page. Scroll down to the Regional Circles header and you’ll find us listed as the Gateway Audio Society.
Not perfect but it should due just fine as a little publicity. Hopefully other people around the area read the article and join in. It would be nice to double our size. That would give us even more systems that we can sample and new friends to meet.
I'd really like to see us get to the point that we make enough money so we can start offering scholorships to kids wanting to be music majors or maybe even sponsor a concert at the Bistro or the Sheldon. That would be extremely cool. Thats where our own little AudioFest would be great. Rather than pocketing the money, we would give it back to the community (the kids).
Someday when we get all these grand ideas off the ground, we'll defiantely need to set up ourselves as a not for profit org. Who knows, maybe we can talk pjchappy into doing a little pro-bono work for our good cause (Hey PJ, are you out there still?).
Tell you what, I'll make a separate post for the GAS dates so it's easier to keep track of. Bryan, you may want to make a separate post for shirts and hats as well.
