Visitors thoughts from the bake-off.

[Covenant]

A collection of my thoughts in no particular order:
Nice place but horrendous coffee and overpriced sandwiches.
Good to put faces to names.
Well managed and just the right amount of people to make a lively event
Fast, loud electronic music tells you very little about the quality of a system
Marco's speakers are awesome-as his the rest of his system really.
Cheap chinese valve amps are not bad at all.
Big Tannoys are an absolute no-no with the missus
Bass boom a problem with some systems-not time to set up properly I suppose.
All in all a great success, well done to the organisers and participants.

[baron]

A collection of my thoughts in no particular order:
Nice place but horrendous coffee and overpriced sandwiches.
Good to put faces to names.
Well managed and just the right amount of people to make a lively event
Fast, loud electronic music tells you very little about the quality of a system
Marco's speakers are awesome-as his the rest of his system really.
Cheap chinese valve amps are not bad at all.
Big Tannoys are an absolute no-no with the missus
Bass boom a problem with some systems-not time to set up properly I suppose.
All in all a great success, well done to the organisers and participants.

I agree with all of the above, lets hope it happens again next year.
I did find the place was a bit of a maze. Sign posting could have been better.

[purite audio]

Bloody well done AOS, the room sounded fine those hecos can really move air, my only regret is that I couldn't stick around long enough the hear the tt and copper amp, how do you make coffee taste like that? Fine effort.

[Mike]

A great day... Still putting my thoughts in order ATM.

One small point: Those weren't Marco's speakers. If anything his sound better than the Heco's (IMO).

[Steve Toy]

The Hecos are the bigger brothers of the ones I use at home. I essentially wanted a similar presentation to suit the bigger room.

Marco's turntable was stonking, as was the Copper amp.

And Rob's computer audio setup was very good indeed. It sounded a little shut-in and flat at first but when we moved the Beresford DAC onto a proper shelf it opened up nicely with improved dynamics and tunefulness.

[Beechwoods]

Just got back ... I thought the AOS setup was great, both digital and analogue, and it really nice to meet some of the other members, Jerry, Paul and Baron in particular. Not to mention the rest of the AOS management team who I'd never met before. Marco is a pussycat really

I can also vouch for the miracle-shelf that worked wonders on the presentation of the Beresford. I can no longer claim scepticism of the benefits of a good shelf, even on inert solidstate kit like DACs

Seeing and hearing other peoples systems was great too. Worthy of special mention for me, would be Steve SPS's brilliant open baffles (Suzanne Vega sounded wonderful) and Pete I Should Coco with some magnificent, huge, and lovely sounding Tannoys, and granite plinthed Technics SL10 (if I remember correctly...).

All in all well worth the 6 hours round trip. And there was no painful initiation, which was nice

[Covenant]

Thats interesting about the shelf Steve. My 7520 is burning in at the moment but its just on a glass shelf in a Blok rack. Would it benefit from anything else underneath it?

[Mike]

One thing I have learnt - I don't like CDP's in general, computer audio is better(ish).

Both pale (almost) into insignificance in the face of good analogue for me though, no matter how 'high end' the DAC. Analogue is sooo much more natural sounding. Ooh look, a system that captures a whole note, instead of umpteen little slices of one!

I can see elements in digital that would attract some, but for me... well, I know what I like!

[Spectral Morn]

Hi Covenant

Thats interesting about the shelf Steve. My 7520 is burning in at the moment but its just on a glass shelf in a Blok rack. Would it benefit from anything else underneath it?

The answer would be YES. When I listened to the 7510 I found it beneficial to try isolation under it, with very good results. I suspect that the 7520 will be the same. I will look at that aspect when I review it soon. See my Digital review for more info on my findings with the 7510 http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1919

Sorry for the slight Hi-Jack. I just had to answer the question.


Regards D S D L----Neil

[Marco]

Hi guys,

Not long in and am bloody knackered! I'll post my thoughts of the event in full tomorrow. Some nice pictures will also no doubt come in due course from Rob and Tony Sallis.

I'd just like to say thanks to all who visited our room and it was nice to meet Beechy (Rob and Mikey, again) and the usual crew, plus Paul (Primalsea), Baron, Jerry (jandl100) Richard (Gromit) and all sorts nice people (sorry) can't remember all the names.

Hopefully most of you will feel that we made a decent sound

Hitting the sack now!

Laters,
Marco.