Snoopdog's Autumn (post-was Show)Bake-Off - 8/9th October 2022

Jules_S

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A huge thanks to you, Steve, for hosting another excellent bake-off. It was a great day, fun to hear the way the second system came together over the course of the day. It was a treat to hear your main rig too with the D'Agostinos singing away - a truly memorable experience (for the right reasons!)

Good food, good company, good music.... good day! :)
 

technobear

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Thank you Steve. What a great day. Good to meet some more wammers and meet again some I met at Stoke last week. Lots of great gear, great music and great company. I'm glad the Hugo 2 stood up to scrutiny but it looks like I need a new and better interconnect. Mr Lurch has kindly lent me some Klotz MC5000 so I shall experiment with that. I was quite taken with the Van den Hul The Surf Hybrid that somebody brought along (can't recall who, sorry). That was a definite improvement. Much sweeter and more refined.
 

Jules_S

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Van den Hul is occasionally referred to somewhat unkindly I think as Van den Dull. From a personal perspective I've been using First Ultimate I/Cs for a long time and find it to be refined rather than boring. But that's just me - maybe I'm dull too :unsure:

Certainly the Surf isn't an outrageous sum to spend on a cable, and if you buy through someone like Futureshop (no connection to me) you get a 30-day returns anyway so you can try it out without being out of pocket if it doesn't work out

Edit: apparently it's 60 days, not 30 so 👍
 
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Rockchild

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Thank you Steve. What a great day. Good to meet some more wammers and meet again some I met at Stoke last week. Lots of great gear, great music and great company. I'm glad the Hugo 2 stood up to scrutiny but it looks like I need a new and better interconnect. Mr Lurch has kindly lent me some Klotz MC5000 so I shall experiment with that. I was quite taken with the Van den Hul The Surf Hybrid that somebody brought along (can't recall who, sorry). That was a definite improvement. Much sweeter and more refined.
That was me 😊
 

Non-Smoking Man

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My first time at Snoopdog's.
Steve puts on a good show in time-honoured Wam fashion - main room has the big system which largely remains untouched as it is sorted, and the second room is free for his guests to assemble an impromptu system from disparate bits of kit. (In this case the second was unusually spacious, though a tad lively. The sound in that room was improved by the likes of GLB and Technobear as the afternoon went on I thought - different amps, cables helping to tame the live room.)

My main interest was Steve's very extensive (and expensive) system in the big(ger) room. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into this - there were new pre and power amps from D'Agostino, a streamer, and a CD player, plus a very nice Raven turntable, lovely American unipivot and a Transfiguration Orpheus, two REL subs complimenting the excellent TAD speakers and various strategically placed cylindrical room treatment towers, plus soft furnishings.

(Some of this equipment had been supplied by Mike, who was present, and I had a long interesting chat with him..)

I found the system's SQ matched its impressive looks . It had untold power and drove the room easily. I couldnt hear the room intruding at all and the music was unforced and clean, but not clinical. There was plenty of detail over all frequencies and the Tads handled all sorts of music with ease - though Steve plays loud it was never uncomfortablely so because the sound was so clean and undistorted.
I found this system useful as a reference by which to compare my big horn system. As we know there are many different approaches to high end, but they can be divided into 2 camps - high power/low efficiency and low power/high efficiency. In the latter camp you tend to find valve amps (at least at certain frequencies (mids and tops)) and in the former solid state supplying a lot of current. Steve's betting on high power and medium-low efficiency and its a convincing and successful example of its type.

Ive gone the other route - several of my compression drivers are 115 db/w and driven by 6 watt valve amps. The resulting sound is subtly different, but equally valid. I got an excellent handle on this as we played Nightclubbing side 1 (Grace Jones) - a record I'm entirely familiar with (ad nauseam) on Steve's CD player and vinyl player. So I was able to personally relate his sound to mine.

Good day and looking forward to the next one there in Alresford. Rockchild was talking about trying to get something together in the West Country - hopefully the Wammers down there, including Greybeard and GLB can put something together next year.

Jack NSM
 
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GLB

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Thank you Steve for a great day , as noted your system is Amazing , the added streamer to melco brings streaming ever closer to the dcs adding a more open and detailed presentation to that of just using the melco , i even had to keep asking what was playing cd or steamer , the dcs was tighter and very very clean in all its detail layering and stage as one would expect , but that steamer was bloody good .

The second system did improve over the day but never really got over what was a lively room , although after a change off interconnects things did seem to settle a little and most things where listenable and a few good recordings even enjoyable ,

looking forward to Johns bash and another great day soon God Bless , Chris .
 

Snoopdog

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Great photo Jon (Rockchild)!

Reminded me of the "chest-buster" scene in the film "Alien!" 😄
 

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Speedracer

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Really disappointed to miss out on this, I have been taking liberties with my body/health for a bit now so it wasn't surprising when on getting home from the Daventry show it cried "enough". I know from the outside I look reasonably normal & healthy but without my daily cocktail of 24 pills for various problems I literally couldn't function normally, but I have had a good run lately so a day like this was on the cards sadly.

Looks like you all had a great time, & hope I can make the next one.
 
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chrisph

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Thanks chaps for the write up and photos of what sounded like an interesting day.

I hope to make it to any future BO you may hold Steve.
 
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Snoopdog

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Thank you, all those who attended my second "free for all" bake-off and for all your kind comments!

I am glad that everyone enjoyed themselves and had enough to eat and drink.

One of my guests yesterday, Mike from Studio AV in Chobham, Surrey, was kind enough to loan me an Aurender N20 server/streamer, last Wednesday for an extended home demo.

I had been using the Aurender N20 for a few days prior to yesterday's bake-off and have been pleasantly surprised with what it brings to the table!

As delivered, it came without any internal hard drive (up to 16 Tb of SSD hard disc can be added to dual bays in the rear of the unit), but for our purposes the Aurender N20 was playing files stored on my Melco NIZH/60 EX, which it found on the network as just another NAS. The sound, playing through the Aurender's circuitry, was greatly enhanced, extracting greater detail, sound staging and ease from each and every recording. This was via a USB connection to my dCS Vivaldi DAC, but the Aurender manual suggests that better performance may be achieved by utilising the AES/EBU output and external clock connection on the N20!

I shall be exploring those options in the days to come!

It was a shame that yesterday's BO clashed with the Daventry Audio Show weekend, as I'm sure that had it been another Sunday, attendance uptake may have been greater.
 

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Snoopdog

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Some more photos!
 

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Jules_S

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Ah, caught "mid-moon" for all eternity! At least you didn't get to experience the full dark-side... :sick::LOL:

Some spectacularly unflattering poses there, Steve, you have a unique knack with a camera ha ha
 

technobear

Ursine Wammer
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I've got bloody 'Hocus Pocus' going round in my head now. Thanks Steve! 🤪

Edit: I'm going to have to track down a copy of that now as it did sound very good.
 
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Non-Smoking Man

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Bit late in the day but it occurred to me that you might experiment with different subwoofer positioning, Steve.

I know you have had expert advice and you do your homework, but you have 2 subs firing into each others mouths and directly at the mains (Tad standmounts).

That seems counterintuitive to me - according to the 'keeping - it - simple' principle and the basic idea that speaker drivers should face the listener, I would try them against the far wall with appropriate spacing (assuming all that digital processing that's in the system does time alignment).

My 10p's worth..

Jack
 
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Rockchild

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Ah, caught "mid-moon" for all eternity! At least you didn't get to experience the full dark-side... :sick::LOL:

Some spectacularly unflattering poses there, Steve, you have a unique knack with a camera ha ha
Lol, I looked like death warmed up 😂 had my haircut since then too.
 
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