First, thanks to all for such a great time. Everyone was nice, friendly and unbelievably helpful. You (all) made this Jersey boy feel mighty welcome.

Ok, here is some of what I picked up while wandering from room to room. Some of this is old hat to you folks but it sure turned my thinking around.

* Horns don't honk. Wayne's corner horns look like they would sound aggressive but they are nothing of the sort. Diana Krall and Ella were purring out of them.

* Full range drivers have bass. Bob Brines has Fostex and Lowther speakers that can go low enough to make an upright bass sound right.

* Solid state gear doesn't mean sterile sound. The little Tripath amp made music. The speaker designed by Dr. Geddes made serious music with his standard issue audio-video receiver!

* Small speakers and tubes can be dynamic, even without a subwoofer. The Element Cable folks had a setup with Quad mini-monitors that just kicked.

* Loud isn't where I expected. Bob had me "crank up" some tunes to see how much volume I could reasonably want and then turned on his RS meter. What I consider loud turns out to be in the high 80 or low 90 db range.

* A watt or two with the right speaker can be dynamic and clean. 6 or 10 watts with the right speaker can be scary. The Abraxas amps really kicked (even if yellow wouldn't have been my own personal color choice).

* Great audio doesn't have to cost as much as a car (or a house). There were a couple of rooms with really fine sounding systems that didn't cost a thousand dollars. There were several systems that cost between 2 and 3 grand that were just plain lovely. These system were nice enough that you could lose yourself in the music and forget the constant audio upgrade silliness.

The weekend was just terrific.

Many thanks.