Heavenly Soundworks Newsletter - September 2021
THE LATEST NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE HEAVENLY SOUNDWORKS TEAM.
Insights | Upcoming News
Insights
Bookshelf or Floorstander?
When it comes to choosing the right loudspeaker for your needs, this question is often asked. Should I go with a bookshelf or floorstander?
Many times the need to ask this question comes down to compromise. Or, more specifically, what are you willing to compromise? Maybe you have limited space and a set of bookshelf speakers would be a better fit. With typical bookshelf speakers, this means sacrificing low-end performance. If you’re not willing to compromise on bass extension then the question becomes bookshelf with subs vs full-range floorstanders, which introduces a new challenge of matching up your speakers and subs properly.
At Heavenly Soundworks, we try to make this decision simple, without compromising performance.
Let’s take a look at our FIVE17 bookshelf speaker and our FIVE21 floorstander. Both of these models have been designed with full-range performance in mind, taking the bass extension issue out of the equation. So, if this is the case then what justifies the larger and more expensive FIVE21’s?
It comes down to 2 things (fundamentally 1 thing).
Volume Level
A loudspeaker produces music by moving air. In order to produce that music louder, it has to move more air. The FIVE21, with more drivers (more driver surface area) and increased power, can move a lot more air.
Room Size
In a small room, you don’t have to move a lot of air to fill the space with sound. The FIVE17 will go more than loud enough in a small room. As the room gets larger the amount of air that needs to move increases and a small speaker will not be able to fill the space with sound at the same level that it could in a smaller room.
Both of these things can be summarized like this, a larger speaker gives you more output. This increase in output can give you higher volume and/or fill a larger room with sound.
Between our FIVE17 and FIVE21, this is the fundamental difference.
Check out the video embedded below to see this in action!
Tradeshows
Rocky Mountain Audio Fest
Below is the statement from the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest team.
“A year and a half ago, our hearts were aching as we made the hard decision to cancel our 2020 show. Back then, we somehow imagined that as a country, we could band together and transcend COVID-19, and our lives could return to normal. We hoped we could ride out a year in isolation and emerge healthy and ready to gather again. Here at RMAF, we spent the year improving our business by producing new room layouts with all the outlets marked, and created a handbook to guide exhibitors as they learned yet again to navigate their exhibitor accounts. We imagined ourselves enthusiastically greeting our audio industry friends in a few weeks, and we’ve held onto that dream in spite of our nervous fears and scary news reports.”
“Even though some parts of the United States are fully open, the number of people contracting the virus, and the number of deaths attributed to it are still rising, and the CDC is projecting an even more deadly Lambda wave this fall. We are frightened on behalf of our friends in the audio industry on many levels. The very worst thing that we can envision is for someone to fall ill because they came to our show, whether as an exhibitor, a journalist, an attendee, or a volunteer. Good health is a precious gift, and we are learning that although recovery is possible, the residual effects of COVID-19 and its variants can be profound, and we are unwilling to risk even one case.”
“Up until now, we have held onto the possibility that our October show could be produced as planned. After reading and listening to the news concerning the Coronavirus pandemic, and watching the cancellation of numerous other shows, we no longer hold that hope. In spite of our initial optimism, we have read and listened to all of your thoughtful comments and then looked at the numbers and made the difficult decision to cancel RMAF 2021.”
“This has been a wrenching decision, and along with it comes the added impact of deciding that we are no longer able to envision RMAF as our hearts delight. RMAF was our founder Al Stiefel’s dream, and we’ve done our best to nurture his vision for 12 years, along with help from the Colorado Audio Society and all our volunteers from around the world. Now, we are off to new adventures! And so it is with both sadness and anticipation for the future, we announce that the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest as we have all known it will be no more. It has been our very great pleasure to have served this community of audio professionals. We have learned so much from you! Thank you for 17 years of friendship and support. It has meant more than you can possibly imagine.
We offer you our heartiest wishes for good health and great happiness.”
Your Friends,
Marjorie and MarcieMarjorie Baumert and Marcie Miller
Rocky Mountain International Audio Fest
AXPONA
Below is the statement from the AXPONA team.
Dear AXPONA Community,
AXPONA will be rescheduled from October 29-31, 2021 until April 22-24, 2022.
Throughout this spring and early summer, enthusiasm for AXPONA in October was sky high. Attendees were buying tickets, exhibitors were making plans and the media were requesting their press passes. But in recent weeks Covid cases in the US, due largely to the Delta variant, have been spiking again which has adversely impacted consumer travel behavior and corporate travel decisions.
Exhibitors and attendees travel to AXPONA from throughout the United States and from more than 40 other countries. Over the last few weeks, citing concerns over personal health, the unpredictability of international travel restrictions and reinstated companywide travel bans, many community members have told us they are unwilling or unable to commit to AXPONA in October.
So we have worked with our Renaissance Schaumburg venue partner to return AXPONA to its traditional spring timeframe in 2022, April 22–24, and we secured future dates from April 14-16, 2023 and April 12-14, 2024. We look forward to full participation in April with over 200 listening rooms, the Ear Gear Experience, Record Fair, Expo Hall, live concerts, networking events and so much more fun for audio gear buyers and sellers from all over the world to safely enjoy.
Lastly, we support other industry gatherings that go ahead this fall as planned. We believe business and consumer events can be successfully held during these times so long as responsible health and safety measures are implemented and adhered to. In fact, we look forward to seeing many of you at some of these upcoming events soon.
We will be in touch with all AXPONA participants in the days and weeks ahead about the April show. If you have immediate questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Ticket holders may call or send questions to Liz Smith and exhibitors and sponsors may call or send questions to Mark Freed.
Until then, stay safe and healthy and immersed in great sounding music!
Sincerely,
Liz Miller Smith Mark Freed
Where do we go from here?
What does this mean for the future of Hi-Fi tradeshows? Well, we don’t know. Only time will tell when such events will start becoming the norm again. What we do know is that the timing is out of our control, which means there’s no sense in worrying about something we can’t change. Instead, we focus on what is in our control; making incredible loudspeaker systems.
The challenge then is how you as a consumer can hear our products and decide whether they are the right fit for you.
For those seriously considering our products for their own listening spaces, our recommendation is to take advantage of our 30-day in-home trial. When you purchase a set of our loudspeakers you have 30 days to evaluate it in your own space and determine if it's the right fit for you. If it's not, for whatever reason, get back to us within that window and we'll send you return labels and a refund.
For those that are on the fence or just slightly curious about our company and products, we offer this suggestion. Reach out to us! While we may not be able to meet up at a Hi-Fi show just yet, we can at least start up a conversation. And you never know, we may have a current customer near you that is willing to have you over for a demo (this has happened more than once).
For now, while we are disappointed that these shows are not happening, we're still here designing and building the best possible loudspeakers we can!
We look forward to chatting with you about it! And eventually, seeing you at future Hi-Fi shows!