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WigWam Scalford 2014 pics etc

sq225917 said:
Tape deck was an Otari and two Nagra's. Best room in show for me.
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I agree it was one of the nicest sounds at the show, but I'm not 100% convinced by the active Rogers as they were! (a) They were using reel-to-reel, which IME is euphonic and (b) they were passing everything through a 24/192 EQ thingy. I would like to hear them straight without the benefit of these things, just to see.

Edit: the system as a whole was very enjoyable, above I refer to their particular lauding of the Rogers.
 
anubisgrau said:
who's the owner of this system? anyone knows what speakers these are? looks like a smart improvement on a klipsch horn
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Simon Mears (Simonms here), there's a thread in the classic room about their develpment here. They really are really beautifully done, amazing craftsmanship and sounded great too. They are to be a commercial product.
 
Impressive finishing on the inside of the horn flares, I'd love to see those being made. Frankly the price tag on every single item in the room was a little ' chavy' perhaps a brochure would have been more discreet and in keeping with the standards of fit and finish on the items.
 
Tony L said:
Simon Mears (Simonms here), there's a thread in the classic room about their develpment here. They really are really beautifully done, amazing craftsmanship and sounded great too. They are to be a commercial product.
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many thanks, very curious how these would sound. they look perfectly domesticated which ain't a common thing for the horns....
 
YNWOAN said:
I heard the Yamaha/Naim demo and had no difficulty hearing a difference between the two with the Yamaha sounding rather 'thin' - even at the low levels used.
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The odd thing was that the difference seemed to vary slightly during the day possibly due to slight volume differences, possibly source dependent, or possibly movement of the stars :)

Overall it was roughly 1/3 preference for the Naim 1/3 Yam 1/3 no difference, with most but not all considering the difference small.

I would say though that of those who expressed a strong preference it was almost always for the Naim - just 2 or 3 people.

Obviously not scientific but a fun experiment and one that surprised quite a few.

The little Quads went down well too.

Tim
 
Yes, a fun experiment. I only heard the Quads and unfortunately missed hearing the demo on the Kans. when I was there the switching between the two amps was very slickly done and the level matching seemed excellent - it was just that the overall level was lower than I would usually use for such.
 
Looks like it was a wonderful day out and really regret not getting there. Thanks for the pictures Tony.

How did people find the quadraphonic setup?
 
I predict the next Wigwam craze will be for Snells - or has that already happened?
I certainly enjoyed Dean's, although his Funkadelic music certainly helped.

The big horns built with scalfording sounded excellent on organ music.

Overall the SPLs seemed lower than previous years and ther was no evdence of hung-over Wammers either. All getting a bit old and sensible??

merlin said:
How did people find the quadraphonic setup?
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Spoiled by very poor speakers.
 
Paul R said:
That was a deliberate policy.

Although I don't know what their unique strengths might be.

Paul
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Further to Paul's comments, we titled the room: Confounding Expectations, the Old and the New.

Therefore there was little point playing the type of music that the guy downstairs with 57s was playing (although if someone asked we would have done). We wanted to show that you could play anything on the 57s.

Narabdela,

We were happy to play music that people wanted heard. we had a wide selection of music available, could accept USB sticks with music on and could play CDs.

For example a young man came in and asked if we could play The Prodigy, Firestarter, which we duly did and it sounded pretty good and I am sure must have confounded expectations for some.
 
I had a great day. When I got there my system didn't play ball and I was up very late fixing it but got there in the end. I had a very good response and as its a result of my own very steep learning curve I felt validated. A few folk came back time after time. Most of the comments centred around the fact that they'd been in room with ludicrously expensive systems and found it refreshing that at least some of them could be bested by m diy efforts.

The highlight for me was RJCs system. I don't like horn loaded systems generally they don't image that well always sounding fixed to the speakers. They can then lack the coherency associated with smaller point sources located closely in a baffle. However this system had the best soundstage I have ever heard. It was rock solid. Even moving bodies in front of thee speakers never changed it. And the carpentry was sublime as well.

There were lots of lovely sounds. Mostly quite euphonic. Strangely the vinyl/valve replay systems that seemed to get the main interest were the ones that had engineered out the shortcomings and sounded much more like a high end DAC.

My biggest impression from the show was of how similar the well setup systems sounded what ever kit was making the noises. Also that I don't need to spend any more money, some of the very expensive stuff sounded mediocre. It also struck me that the rooms folk talked adout the most had more to do with clique and how active the owner was on the WAM than how the system actually sounded. A lot of ego massaging going on!

All in all a very enjoyable show with a lot learned. Definitely going again next year.

Stefan
 
orangeart said:
It also struck me that the rooms folk talked adout the most had more to do with clique and how active the owner was on the WAM than how the system actually sounded. A lot of ego massaging going on!
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You need 10K posts on the Wam before you can say things like that!
 
orangeart said:
I had a great day. When I got there my system didn't play ball and I was up very late fixing it but got there in the end. I had a very good response and as its a result of my own very steep learning curve I felt validated. A few folk came back time after time. Most of the comments centred around the fact that they'd been in room with ludicrously expensive systems and found it refreshing that at least some of them could be bested by m diy efforts.

The highlight for me was RJCs system. I don't like horn loaded systems generally they don't image that well always sounding fixed to the speakers. They can then lack the coherency associated with smaller point sources located closely in a baffle. However this system had the best soundstage I have ever heard. It was rock solid. Even moving bodies in front of thee speakers never changed it. And the carpentry was sublime as well.

There were lots of lovely sounds. Mostly quite euphonic. Strangely the vinyl/valve replay systems that seemed to get the main interest were the ones that had engineered out the shortcomings and sounded much more like a high end DAC.

My biggest impression from the show was of how similar the well setup systems sounded what ever kit was making the noises. Also that I don't need to spend any more money, some of the very expensive stuff sounded mediocre. It also struck me that the rooms folk talked adout the most had more to do with clique and how active the owner was on the WAM than how the system actually sounded. A lot of ego massaging going on!

All in all a very enjoyable show with a lot learned. Definitely going again next year.

Stefan
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I really enjoyed you set up Stefan,it sounded excellent in that room,
Keith.
 
Tony L said:
A tale of horns:

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12886165133_786f79c921_o.jpg
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Thanks for the pix, Tony. The equipment looks great. I'll definitely try and come along to Scalford at some point.

Jack
 
S-Man said:
I predict the next Wigwam craze will be for Snells - or has that already happened?
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Looks like it's already happened! Lots of them this year, whereas a couple of years ago everyone had huge Tannoys! The Type J stand-mounts really pack some wallop for their size. Very nice speakers IMO.

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I really liked the Type As above. This picture is from last year, but they were there again yesterday (the pic I took adds nothing to this one so I didn't bother uploading it). A nice big neutral and easy sound, and in a largish room too. Very nice speakers.
 
I always find something to enjoy at Scalford: yesterday was no exception. Still in awe of the effort required by everyone to bring that amount of equipment into the various rooms. I suspect Non-Smoking Man's big horns would probably only fit in the Colman Room - I can't imaging how big his lounge must be to accommodate them. Sounded so effortless too.

Won't go through the individual rooms, but I was seriously impressed with the little Q Acoustic speakers on the end of the massive Sony amp in Gromit's room. Loved Lodgesound's R2R room too. Some systems just didn't integrate into their temporary environment, some worked very well - I heard a lot I liked, but nothing that made me want to change anything I have.

Best looking turntable (for me) was the Bergmann in Alphatoner's room - a thing of beauty. As always, heard enough new music to keep me busy on ebay/Discogs/Musicstack today...
 
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