Coming to a society near you...

Well I am tired and it has been a long week already; and it is only Wednesday so I will try to keep this short. Yesterday evening I went to my first meeting of my local audio society. Wow. These guys are crazy. And yes, they were all guys. It was the group's audio science fair, where members would talk about the DIY projects they had been working on. There was a rebuilt tube amp, a heavily modified turntable, and an original design/built-from-parts digital amp that had so much capacitance that the builder was able to unplug the amp while we were listening to it and the music kept going for at least 30 seconds. One thing that made it so cool was that though most of these guys were just hobbyists, some of them were engineers and designers at some major audio companies. It was neat to hear them talk about building the gear that I only dream of listening to. The whole experience was entertaining and quite educational. I learned a lot about how gear worked just by listening to these guys converse. I highly recommend looking in your area to see if you have an audio society near you.