Whittlebury Show

You now have a chance to listen to the Wadax Atlantis, speakers are very good to.

The active blackwood audios were head and shoulders above everything else, the full brinkman + Franco serbelin in Mike valentines room were also very good.

We went to Whittlebury yesterday (Dave aka Antonio66 and I). I don't think the show was as large as we were expecting, but we still managed to stay from 9.30 a.m. to 3.00 p.m.

In reply to Tony's post, the Boyer room was the outstanding room of the show. They had the Wadax Atlantis Ref DAC and Wadax Ref Server with Engstrom valve amplifiers and Kroma speakers. Cabling and power conditioning etc. was by Shunyata. We felt the soundstaging was magnificent, particularly with the stand-mount speakers and integrated amplifier. The larger speaker, driven by the preamp and very expensive monoblocks was probably better, but the smaller amplifier and speakers would be enough for most people with normal-sized listening rooms.

We only listened to one of the booked Absolute Sounds demonstrations; Wilson Sasha V, Dan D'Agostino integrated amplifier, dCS Rossini front end and Transparent cabling. Again, we agreed with Tony; the sound was definitely not natural or "real" sounding; it was definitely in the hi-fi sound bracket - sharp and forward top end, bass was a bit lumpy and not well defined. We always thought Wilson speakers were very well matched with Audio Research amplifiers.

Other rooms we liked, in no particular order were:

Connecting Music Distribution - Mastersound valve amplifier, Bricasti digital, LDMS streamers and Sonus Faber 2 way floorstanders. Very nice, easy to listen to sound with plenty of detail, but not fatiguing. We thought it was probably very good value.

Another Absolute Sounds room with Devore Orangutan speakers and Trafomatic Rhapsody valve amplifier with a couple of front ends in a quite small room. We thought this was also a nice sounding system. The Devore's were good with the usual "hi-fi" music of jazz and classical, but we also listened to Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond (a track we know well), and we both enjoyed the sound. Again, this was a comparatively lower cost system which sounded better on the day than some systems costing much more.

Blackwood Audio. This, as SQ225917 says is an active system, but with an external amplifier (as Linn and Naim used to do?). All of the system components were by Blackwood, and the sound quality was very good and non-fatiguing.

Some more comments on other rooms:

House of Linn. They used a Melco server with Linn streamer, Klimax Solo Mono power amplifiers and ATC SCM100PSLT speakers. We thought the sound was ok, but not really involving. For the suspected cost, we thought it was not really a good value system.

Innuos were using their top streamer/server with dCS Vivaldi DAC/Upsampler and large Wilson Benesch speakers driven by Audio Research monoblocks. In a quite small room, the sound was undeniably good, but I think it was again, a high-cost system (probably £100k plus), and not really among the most enjoyable we heard. The speakers would probably sound better in a larger room.

AIRT audio distributors were using Avalon speakers with some relatively inexpensive electronics from Waversa. Unlike Tony, we thought these sounded quite good; the speakers were the most expensive component in the system, but by far from Avalon's top range speakers.

Audio Group Denmark had a large room and were demonstrating the very tall Borreson M6 speakers with Aavik **9 series electronics and Ansuz signature cables. I thought the system would sound better than it did, but one of the AGD employees was singing along to Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, so he obviously liked the sound.

There wasn't really much else that caught my imagination, and some rooms we didn't stay in very long, either because we didn't really like the sound, or the music being played.

It was our first hi-fi show for a few years, and even though we had a long drive, we had an enjoyable day out.

Dave has done a review on another forum (PFM) under the show thread (Salamander).

Mark and Dave.

Hi Mr C,

Dave spoke with the rep from Blackwoods. He, and presumably the company, is Croatian. The rep said the speakers were prototypes, and the full system which comprised active speakers, DSP, amplifiers and streamer, had a cost of 100,000 Euros. They also had another speaker, which was a pyramid shape. With these speakers (which have the amps inside the speakers) instead of the prototypes, the full system cost woud be 45,000 Euros. I hope this helps.

Now Dave, we have spoken about this before and it was on the understanding you didn't mention the 80's anymore

Totally agree with that statement Simon

I purposely sat in the rooms and listened to the conversations people were having while listening to the presentations and frankly some of the comments chaps were making were shall we say alien, and left me wondering what thery were actually hearing in the same room as myself while sat just two rows in front. Because in all honesty I didn't recognise anything they were discussing.

Influences on what your current equipment currently is, the demo room size and what music was being played was all very relevant along with preconceptions, for example the Dali room with the accusnoozeamps  gained many very positive comments while I was there, it was one of the better sounding rooms no question, but it was very safe well trimmed around the edges and nothing untoward happening in any portion of the audio spectrum. Although is was very nice and yet still plain jane. However you can see the visitors faces were very appreciative of the sounds and music being played in there. It was appealing to these folks in a big way.

The Boyer room wasn't without issues it wasn't as natural or fuild as the really good systems deliver and it could get a touch strident, BUT it made a massive sound stage and generated real 3 dimensional sound, something none of these other did at the show to anywhere near that degree. Although that aspect was purely down to the wadax and its superb power supplies.

With other amplifiers and speakers it could have been epic no question imho

Still not convinced by that venue only four rooms have the right acountics (have measured all the rooms on the ground and second floors) and well I could go on, the important thing is people enjoyed themselves which gives a good feeling and that these days is a rare commodity!

Takio is a very small manufacturer and a lot of the real world not willy waver forum inhabitants are very wary of their constant design changes and updates, plus the backup isn't the same as some of the other high end guys, for a lot of potential purchasers it more than puts them off. Stability of the brand and safe in the knowledge their equipment will be looked after and serviced in years to come.

Also the sound is very divisive, while being a very, very wow listen, It’s uber detail and stunning dynamic slam coupled with leading edge presence. It’s not really that 3 Dimensional and the layering isn't as good as others. fluidity isn't a strong point either, the amount of chatter on that outlet isn't anyway near a large as it was say 12 months ago. I have owned a couple of them and while they certainly are impressive, but I do not wish to be tied to roon or an awkward third-party app. Honestly for me it was a hard work and tiring listen, although that is my feeling and others will have polar opposite views.

I am all for new innovation and progress, but it's been careful cultivated by a few specialist selected high end dealers with specific links to that portion of the market and Influencers (like absolute clowns used to perpetuate with the UK hifi press) only with the specific sets of high net worth circles being from that investment hedge fund background Mark you will understand this.

Lotus have never distributed Takio that's Kog and lotus doesn't distribute Wadax either that's Boyer who also distribute Shunyata

Happy to demonstrate a Takio and a couple of other high end streamers no problem at all

Very good observations Simon

sq225917 "For me the boyer room did what it did because of the size of the room, speakers well out and spaced far apart. Everything they played sounded huge, whether it was or not."

The speakers were placed well out into the room (3m?), but I have seen other speakers at shows placed a similar distance from the rear wall. How do you know the speakers were placed too far apart? the standmounts, which I enjoyed the most were place inside the floorstanders. I did not think everything sounded huge, a couple of tracks did give amazing front to back depth though.

macca The above comments sound like Del Boy selling cheap do-it-all hifi on his market stall.  

Not great though, are they.