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I guess I'm showing my age here. Long before the internet, long before Audiogon, long before Audioasylum--there was The Audiophile Network. Colloquially known as TAN, The Audiophile Network was the brainchild of Guy Hickey (who has sadly dropped off the face of the earth and no one knows where he is anymore), the designer of the Quatre Gain Cell solid-state amplifier, one of the darlings of day back then.
TAN was a revolutionary concept. Besides bringing together audiophiles from all over the US and building a nationwide audio community (today's boards and Facebook are world wide), TAN allowed for near instant dissemination of audio information, something we take for granted today but didn't exist in the early '80s. Even bigger, TAN was free of the trolls and flaming that invades and kills today's audio forums. Sure there were plenty of egos on TAN but they all managed to respect each other and put aside their dogmas in the interest of learning from each other. If there's one thing that dogmas teach us, they are built to be overturned. And like TAN, flaming and trolling will not be found on audionirvana.org.
Connecting to TAN wasn't so easy in the day of 600 baud modems (I remember jumping for joy when I bought a 1200 baud modem for my postage stamp sized, monochrome screen, MAC 30SE computer) and connecting via a long distance phone call to Guy's office. As David Robinson of PF recently shared with me, "Guy was and I were both sysops using the same software (Phil Becker's great TBSS system) in multi-line setup at the same time and so we would call each other and share notes." Yes it was a very exciting time in in audio!
And TAN was the place to be with the likes of manufacturers like John Curl and Mary Cardas, soon to be manufacturers like Chris Somnivigo, Gordon Rankin, Barry Kohan, Jeff Joseph, Les Edelberg, Ken Kantor, Steve Eddy and Jud Barber, writers/editors such John Atkinson, Jonathan Scull, Jack English, David Robinson, Doug Schneider, Lonnie Brownell, Rick Rosen, Corey Greenberg, Kal Rubinson, Robert Reina, Jeff Goggin, Steve Rochlin, Clark Johnson, Stu McCreary, Todd Warnke, Scott Dorsey, Doug Blackburn and yours truly--a regular industry Who's Who here--regularly contributing to the board. Plus audiophliles such as Dave Duvall, Wendell Narrod and Dave Carpe who I still see around the internet.
My fondest TAN memory though has nothing to do with audio. One afternoon while at work in the 1988 (?), I decided to log into TAN. (No I couldn't wait to call after 9 PM when the rates were cheaper.) As I was scanning through that day's logs, I was suddenly and unexplainedly disconnected from TAN. Multiple attempts to relog in again simply resulted in a busy signal (maybe not an unusual experience in the days of dial up connections!). It wasn't until later though that I learned that a major earthquake in S. California had cut off phone lines and prevented my connecting to TAN!
Guy, unfortunately, was unable to adapt to and transition TAN into the new internet era. Sadly, the site soon disappeared into the sunset though a couple of years ago, John Atkinson surprised me with a CD-ROM containing all the threads and conversations that too place on this forum. Talk about a time warp!
The famous TAN office! Yes, it took a long distance call to log into Guy's computer. I don't want to think of my long distance phone bills in those days.
The very first TAN West Coast meeting. There was also an East Coast get together at then member Yogi Saxena attended by people such as Kevin Olson, John Rutan (Audio Connection, Verona, NJ) and a host of other people.
TAN was a revolutionary concept. Besides bringing together audiophiles from all over the US and building a nationwide audio community (today's boards and Facebook are world wide), TAN allowed for near instant dissemination of audio information, something we take for granted today but didn't exist in the early '80s. Even bigger, TAN was free of the trolls and flaming that invades and kills today's audio forums. Sure there were plenty of egos on TAN but they all managed to respect each other and put aside their dogmas in the interest of learning from each other. If there's one thing that dogmas teach us, they are built to be overturned. And like TAN, flaming and trolling will not be found on audionirvana.org.
Connecting to TAN wasn't so easy in the day of 600 baud modems (I remember jumping for joy when I bought a 1200 baud modem for my postage stamp sized, monochrome screen, MAC 30SE computer) and connecting via a long distance phone call to Guy's office. As David Robinson of PF recently shared with me, "Guy was and I were both sysops using the same software (Phil Becker's great TBSS system) in multi-line setup at the same time and so we would call each other and share notes." Yes it was a very exciting time in in audio!
And TAN was the place to be with the likes of manufacturers like John Curl and Mary Cardas, soon to be manufacturers like Chris Somnivigo, Gordon Rankin, Barry Kohan, Jeff Joseph, Les Edelberg, Ken Kantor, Steve Eddy and Jud Barber, writers/editors such John Atkinson, Jonathan Scull, Jack English, David Robinson, Doug Schneider, Lonnie Brownell, Rick Rosen, Corey Greenberg, Kal Rubinson, Robert Reina, Jeff Goggin, Steve Rochlin, Clark Johnson, Stu McCreary, Todd Warnke, Scott Dorsey, Doug Blackburn and yours truly--a regular industry Who's Who here--regularly contributing to the board. Plus audiophliles such as Dave Duvall, Wendell Narrod and Dave Carpe who I still see around the internet.
My fondest TAN memory though has nothing to do with audio. One afternoon while at work in the 1988 (?), I decided to log into TAN. (No I couldn't wait to call after 9 PM when the rates were cheaper.) As I was scanning through that day's logs, I was suddenly and unexplainedly disconnected from TAN. Multiple attempts to relog in again simply resulted in a busy signal (maybe not an unusual experience in the days of dial up connections!). It wasn't until later though that I learned that a major earthquake in S. California had cut off phone lines and prevented my connecting to TAN!
Guy, unfortunately, was unable to adapt to and transition TAN into the new internet era. Sadly, the site soon disappeared into the sunset though a couple of years ago, John Atkinson surprised me with a CD-ROM containing all the threads and conversations that too place on this forum. Talk about a time warp!
The famous TAN office! Yes, it took a long distance call to log into Guy's computer. I don't want to think of my long distance phone bills in those days.
The very first TAN West Coast meeting. There was also an East Coast get together at then member Yogi Saxena attended by people such as Kevin Olson, John Rutan (Audio Connection, Verona, NJ) and a host of other people.
I talked to a few old Tann-ners (John Atkinson, Jeff Josephs and a couple of others that am still in contact with) to try and get an accurate list. But our memories aren't what they used to be. John actually gave me a CD-ROM a while back with all the contents of TAN but I can no longer open it on my current computer. 
Leave it to John to archive the site.
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