Gadget Show Live A Report from Professional Day

The Gadget Show Live is one hell of a phenomenon amongst shows, right up there with the Top Gear tour. Fuelled by TV fandom, the sheer breadth of that which is termed a gadget is brilliant and a lovely delight of boyish stuff from radio control cars to Bluetooth flying saucers controlled by an iPhone, via 3D everything and a plethora of storage and case products to keep it all safe.
Mind you, link, who are girly iPad case makers who use pretty floral girly fabrics (the company is named after the originators’ cats) are about as feminine an outfit as exists and were exhibiting.(At time of writing, the GSL show lasts for the rest of the week)
As is my newish trend, I have taken a few videos of some stuff that I wanted to find out more about. First, there has been some mutual attraction going on out there that you all need to know about and has been made evident at this and the trade show I just went to. It’s that the companies most making efforts to promote themselves right now are finding us.
I discovered our ears aughta be burning because Talk Audio was being looked at by guys at Sony and the lovely folks at Parrot simply said, ‘˜been wanting to talk to you’ when I first hove into view, which is nice.
The real players were all at the show, which meant there was a happening stand, well placed for the midbass guys to show off their new Vibe, Fli, Edge and BlackDeath kit for 2011. JVC and Kenwood were present, with Car Audio & Security selling ICE and representing the JBL and Infinity brands that they look after for the UK specialist aftermarket.
Sony had one gismo that I just lovedin a world of increasing Internet ‘˜Widgets’ on TVs, Sony have included their Bravia Internet TV wizardry into small, second-set products, like 22 inch ones. But best of all, you can plug it into any TV with an aerial socket, so they were demonstrating it on a 1973 Trinitron Cathode Ray Tube glass TV that was state of the art in its day. A wooden TV with Internet on it(Note the Sony chap display his youth in getting the year of the TV set’s vintage wrongas colour came in waay after the 1963 date he citesI recall it I was there! He meant 1973.)


Then, I caught up with the Fanny Wang Headphone Company and made off with a set of their On-Ear Wangs to test. But not before sitting the boss down with his two comely young promoter wenches, who were named Elly and Jade, to make another video… (Note me plumb misplace Jade’s name for a momentshort-term memory like a goldfish!)


The increasingly cool and chuffed to be in his gig, Girish Janday of Pioneer took us through a lovely live and working demo of 2011 units and even one released-at-the-show AV head unit. (Apologies about the focus on occasions. I could do with a far more potent video cam product to do these with, as far as limited and weird not-specially video-lit conditions are concernedbut believe me when I say I am working on it.)


I got a decent peek at the Kenwood 2011 round up and had the top chap take us through it, too


And I nagged one of the guys with Car Audio & Security to do the video of their sexy demo cars. One for JBL and one for Infinity. They do a mean install at CAS and Purav was like, ‘˜all embarrassed’. Turns out he was a total professional natural at this malarkey and took to it like a duck to water(Note the senior Alpine staff, scuttling rapidly across our bows as they spot me shoving the poor bloke along with my camera. The two chaps in suits sort of accelerate.)


It was a brilliant day, seeing some really brilliant people. I even introduced myself to one of the guys from Shure. (Google ‘SM58 forty years’) My love of transducers goes both ways. I’m a bit AC/DC.
Yes, I love microphones and headphones and in-ear canal phones I love ‘˜em ALL’cos they are sexily engineered transducers and that’s like, ma thang! I can bore for hours about rock and roll microphony (or orchestral, or drums) but anyway, if you went, well done. If you didn’t then apply earlier next year as this show is always a roadblock.