Hi Steve
The Windmill is a great venue with food drink and accomodation on site, also it's located on a major trunk road so easy to get to and find, it would get my vote for future events.
The adjoining rooms kind of work, but wow, was it hot. This may not be such a problem as outside temperatures are cooling now but..........
Have you thought about using the larger function room below these two rooms, it would be cooler and have better accoustics as the ceiling is higher and it has a solid floor. The low ceilings in the rooms upstairs (less than the average house) are not ideal and the suspended floor proved a problem in one room particularly, with vinyl replay suffering baddly with foot fall, no matter how carefully YOU tried to walk past
.
My main reason for prefering the ground floor room is that you don't have to navigate the narrow stairs with big speakers, delicate turntables (concrete speaker plinths) etc. I turned up with a speaker on a sack truck and the stairs had me beat. In the ground floor room you could set up 2 systems on opposite walls and have the seats back to back between them, the room is big enough. You could argue that it is bigger than the average home listening room so things might not sound comparable, but I think this is a minor draw back compared with the positive points, oh and its closer to the bar
.
Some food for thought, what do other folks think?
edit: I'll second the early start.
Might be good to start a new thread for NEBO5 even at this early stage?