My Life as a Roadie – Brad O’Toole

Recently I drove to Montreal to help put together a top-level sound system at Salon Son & Image 2011. The secret of this great adventure was several talented people coming together in one space. First of all, Coup de Foudre of Montreal brought together VTL, Wilson, and Transparent. Their own Erik Fortier and Graeme Humfrey kept us on the mark while we moved Wilson Alexandrias inch by inch to the best sonically neutral position within a hotel space. Peter McGrath queued up his key setup recordings and blessed the setup along with Trent Workman of Wilson Audio. Luke Manley made sure all electronics ran at their prime. Transparent and myself provided power and cabling expertise and made sure our personal day-to day experience with this setup came through. Keeping this great system in mind I still have to take a bow to live music. This shared search for that holy grail in audio equipment is my life, but standing in front of musicians always reminds me about how lucky we all are to enjoy great live music. On Thursday evening Coup de Foudre held a customer appreciation evening, with live music. The musician was not just any guitarist but a true icon of the Montreal music scene - John McGale. http://www.johnmcgale.ca/ What an amazing talented musician and a really cool cat to hang with in an amazing space. My weekend continued with one of those audio systems where you could enjoy opera from Puccini's Turandot to opera from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. We even had moments where tears were shed as Leonard Bernstein came to life in front of us. Live concert after live concert graced our room for four days. For some, including me, it was music. Please check out John Atkinson had to say. http://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson150vtl150transparent150beethoven Salon Son and Image ended Sunday, but my roadie days continued. Grabbing all the OPUS cables from the hotel showroom I jumped in a van and headed for American Sounds of Canada’s new and unique house of audio/video. In the mini van I had the privilege of conversing with Dean Peer and Bret Mann. Check out their website at http://www.deanpeer.com/. Both performed live in an intimate setting of this new house/showroom. Many may know Dean as his recording entitled UCross rocked the CES show in Chicago many years ago. His continued use of bass harmonics mixed with southern blues rock guitar is amazing, especially when you get to witness it up close and personal. Thanks Angie Lisi of American Sounds for putting together an amazing and wonderful gathering of like-minded people. I also had a great opportunity to set up the new Jeff Rowland Corus and their new 625 stereo amp along with the Esoteric K-01 and Focal-JM Labs Stella Utopia to create music upstairs while the band was live downstairs. I downloaded Dean and Bret’s latest work entitled airborne in flac and played it on my computer using Amarra and Transparent’s near famous $100 USB cable. Did it work? Yes absolutely. Did it sound live…almost. Was it better than actual live downstairs? No, but my foot was still tapping to the beat, my face was still smiling, and I was not left wanting by the sound from the audio system.

What a unique opportunity these two great dealers afforded Transparent and myself to introduce our newest products, and our very best level of audio. Bringing music into everyone’s life is truly the greatest gift we all share.