It got me thinking about whether we could do something similar. I would love to hear other people’s systems and I enjoy letting people listen to mine. There are often discussions on here about the difficulty of auditioning kit.
Obviously it would require some careful thought from a safety perspective (ie no public posting of addresses etc), but is there any mileage in local groups getting together to listen to each others music / systems?
I am in the York / Leeds area and I’m sure there are loads of amazing systems nearby. I’d happily host a small group with this idea in mind.
my local u3a has various music appreciation groups for those of us of a certain age which meet in peoples homes - but hi-fi is not a consideration anyone has worried about
i would certainly be interested in a hi-fi group in shropshire area
As someone who has been a music / HiFi fan for nearly 50 years I have no one in my close family/friends group who shows any interest in my passion so a localised group of like minded people would be a bit of a revelation.
I am no longer restricted by the constraints of work having retired last year so something like a monthly meet up over a cup of whatever takes your fancy to listen to other enthusiasts systems and listen to their music of choice would be great.
Obviously forum members must be spread over the length and breath of the UK but there must be members who live locally to each other and are not aware that they might have a fellow enthusiast living quite local to them who would love the opportunity to meet up on an informal basis to chat about all things HiFi and music.
How you would get something like this of the ground or if there would be the enthusiasm for such groups I have no idea, perhaps an initial straw poll (however you set one of them up) might be the way to gauge who on the forum might be interested and then it could be moved forward from there.
Obviously it would require members to confirm their location and contact details and I’m not sure how this would sit with forum rules but I’m sure something could be sorted out.
Anyway for anyone who is interested I’m from Nottinghamshire
The forum isn’t really geared up for this kind of thing and we also have to be mindful not just of the rules, but of member privacy and GDPR. However, if a member wishes to get in touch with another member, then provided it’s not to do with anything that would be in breach of forum rules (or trying to circumvent the rules), then I’m happy to pass on an email with a member’s explicit consent.
FWIW, one of the best ways to meet local fellow Naim owners is through events organised by Naim or your local Naim dealer.
Not to be too much of a stereotype but I’m also in a car club and we have “area groups” as part of our forum. They arent restricted to just people who live in that area, but do allow people in an area to post about local events and gatherings. The dealer covering that area also posts there.
It works quite well and we can ask to be allowed to DM members as you suggest Richard. Not sure if this is feasible or if there’d be interest. I have no idea how many members this forum has. The car one has several thousand which might be needed to make this type of sub-division work.
Just a thought as I would certainly enjoy listening to other members systems and also getting their advice on maximising mine.
I suppose we could start with a poll based on Counties, and see what numbers we get (I’m Merseyside).
Then we can create a thread for each county called something like “Listening Club - Merseyside” where we can all initially converse, and request Richard for help in sharing contact data, where a WhatsApp group could be setup to take it further. The Thread may not have much activity after that, other than to get new members in.
A “Listening Club” has been an integral part of music in my life.
Back in the early 1980s, a guy leant over their garden fence and said to their neighbour “your music sounds good, what system do you have?” Thus was born NAG-fi (named after New Ash Green, a village in Kent).
Slowly people got together to listen to music and systems in other peoples homes. I moved to NAG and joined in 1983 and was surprised how many people in the village had great systems and listened to great music. Monthly meetings certainly expanded my musical tastes
Skip forward to today and although none of us still live in the village, we still get together occasionally to listen to home systems and go to gigs or Hi-Fi shows.
Manufacturers were keen to dem their equipment and we had home visits from IncaTech, DNM, Origin Live and Mana to name a few. We also had great visits to Rega, KEF and Chord. Group trips to the Munich show were a regular highlight, if now a little hazy in memory.
We were able to nurture relationships with reviewers and got to visit Jimmy Hughes and Chris Franklin in their homes. We even get a few cryptic mentions in The Flat Response.
For many years we had a table at the Tonbridge Audio Jumble which was a great opportunity to meet other enthusiasts and we got of few new members joining.
Although a lot of our contact is now via social media, we had a great visit to Gearbox Records last year to hear some master tapes in their cutting room.
We were fortunate to all be young when we started, but as Richard has suggested your local Naim dealer (or local gigs) is a good starting point if you you don’t have a music loving neighbour to make contact with over your fence.
Maybe I’m hallucinating this but I could have sworn that we had something similar to this back in the day? It’s an excellent idea and if there’s enough for a North West one then I’d be up for it.
Despite an ill-health retirement I remain in my workplace Album Group. We meet monthly on Teams but also regularly get to gigs together which is something of a joy.
Thanks, I think so too, although it is not really taking flight at the moment (10 replies!).
The car club forum I follow splits the country into areas (rather than counties - which may be too small) and this might be worth considering. Not sure if @Richard.Dane would be prepared to entertain another section on the forum entitled “area groups”. Obviously if it dies a death it can be removed.
Those of us in that area could then post in the relevant place. It may be a bit UK centric of course.
UK groups are Anglia, Cotswolds, East Midlands, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lakeland, London, North East, North West, Northern Ireland, Scotland (sorry @Skeptikal I know this is a rather big area) Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Three Shires, Wales, Wessex, West Midlands, Yorkshire.
We may need to combine / clarify some of these!
Happy to take thoughts, but as per above, it may not take off!
I used to nip up to NAG to a shop called Kara’s in the precinct that had a good selection of CDs. A lot of Blue Note label stuff. This must have been in the early 90’s.
Lots of places are! Feel free to pick your nearest one. We can refine the names if it is an idea people want to take forward, although at the moment this is not looking likely!
Anyone near me in York is more than welcome to DM me and have a listen / critique my set up in return for an invite back. I can’t think of a better way (even through dealers) of hearing different kit in different settings.
This is a good suggestion, but days such as those are not too easy to start up conversations re the nature of this topic. Partly because such days are not so frequent and partly because it is not really the purpose of the day.
I have tried tentatively to start conversations with other attendees on such days and it seems to work best when the venue is not too busy and one has time to build the conversation slowly.
I did end up in deep conversation once with somebody at a dealer event who also had Magico loudspeakers (M6s!) but when it came to him asking for my email - I declined. I needed more time and interaction to be able to get to that point of confidence.
Kara’s was a bit like the Amazon of its day - seemed you could get anything you wanted there. Always had a good selection of vinyl and later on CDs. I’d forgotten how expensive CDs were
I met several people I still know through Naim events back in the day at Audio Counsel but, as noted above, it wasn’t the purpose and I ended up about £5k out of pocket .
There are some logistics to be worked out but I’d like to think that if just one group formed the some good comes from the discussion.
If I joined a group even 10 strong I’d feel quite bad because my living area with hi-fi in it simply won’t accommodate those numbers.
I can’t believe that the response to the pole seems so negative although I accept it’s only been running for 20 odd hours, I for one would love to be able to have the opportunity to meet up on an occasional basis to share music and have a listen to other members systems and talk HiFi nonsense as none of my friends or family share my interest.
Hopefully the pole will get a better response and we can move things forward from there.
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