Some here at WBF might have already heard about the gatherings of fellow ’philes which Jürgen/Shakti is holding at his place a few times a year. As far as I know this started off a few years back as some sort of live meetings of members of the ’aktives-hoeren.de’ forum and grew from there to today’s all-day workshops with some 30-40 people attending on the day.
Last weekend was now again one of these lovely loony meetings, for me the fourth time over the course of the last two years to do the four hours drive to attend. And so I thought I just show a few pictures to give everybody here at WBF an impression of what it’s like there.
Shakti’s place is a beautiful, ca. 120 years old, and completely refurbished, converted inn at the outskirts of Köln (Cologne). With this having been a place to host guests in the past, there is of course still quite a bit of space to do exacty this today and Shakti knows to make the best out of it.
There is one main listening room of ca. 60sqm (650 sqft.), the former front guest room of the inn, where Shakti himself is taking care about the demonstrations. On top of that there is a former, even bigger back room which is normally the home theatre, but which on workshop days usually serves as a second event room, and which is then usually a place for dealers, distributors, or manufacturers to demo their stuff.
The workshops usually have a dedicated topic. This time it was a mixture of hearing the hORNS Universum III, a comparison of different SPUs, a short mid-price phono stage shoot out and a comparison of different LP pressings of various albums. And that was just the front room. In the back room Bohne Audio played their impressive BB-15, their second biggest speaker with a digital crossover and a ribbon going down to 800Hz. Plus Andrejs Staltmanis, the German importer for Reed demoed their newest deck, the idler driven Reed Muse 1C plus the just amazing new tangential tonearm Reed 5T.
Enough words now, here are the pictures...
Last weekend was now again one of these lovely loony meetings, for me the fourth time over the course of the last two years to do the four hours drive to attend. And so I thought I just show a few pictures to give everybody here at WBF an impression of what it’s like there.
Shakti’s place is a beautiful, ca. 120 years old, and completely refurbished, converted inn at the outskirts of Köln (Cologne). With this having been a place to host guests in the past, there is of course still quite a bit of space to do exacty this today and Shakti knows to make the best out of it.
There is one main listening room of ca. 60sqm (650 sqft.), the former front guest room of the inn, where Shakti himself is taking care about the demonstrations. On top of that there is a former, even bigger back room which is normally the home theatre, but which on workshop days usually serves as a second event room, and which is then usually a place for dealers, distributors, or manufacturers to demo their stuff.
The workshops usually have a dedicated topic. This time it was a mixture of hearing the hORNS Universum III, a comparison of different SPUs, a short mid-price phono stage shoot out and a comparison of different LP pressings of various albums. And that was just the front room. In the back room Bohne Audio played their impressive BB-15, their second biggest speaker with a digital crossover and a ribbon going down to 800Hz. Plus Andrejs Staltmanis, the German importer for Reed demoed their newest deck, the idler driven Reed Muse 1C plus the just amazing new tangential tonearm Reed 5T.
Enough words now, here are the pictures...
