Tom Tom is ten

[Jason]

Tom Tom is now ten and to celebrate this momentous occasion  James and the team threw a party for all of Tom Tom’s customers at the Noke Thistle hotel in St Albans. The event was not unlike Tom Tom's Festival of Sound shows but this time visitors were treated to a glass of bubbly and a buffet meal with live entertainment as a thank you for their support.

The chance to hear new kit from Guru Pro Audio, Naim Audio and Rega was also on the menu and it's not surprising that over a hundred customers and Tom Tom Club members turned up for the show. I was intrigued to hear the new Guru Junior, a compact stand mount with a distinctive retro aesthetic that should bring this most entertaining of speaker brands to a wider audience.

The Junior was being used in the Mary Austin Suite where the dynamic Henry was having a lot of fun with an iPad controlling a Naim NDX with XPS power supply, this was being 'fed' by a UnitiServe drive and ran through a NAC 282 preamp with a  Supercap supply and NAP 200 power amp. A combination that sounded excellent with material from the likes of Dub Qawwali, Patti Smith and scandi jazzers Oddjob. I found a favourite track on the system called The Way by MeShell Ndegeocello which showed off the muscular bass on offer from these diminutive speakers. This system also featured the Rega RP8, the latest turntable from Southend has a radically cut-out foam cored plinth and a aluminium brace locking the tonearm to the main bearing. It sounded extremely open and revealing with singer songwriter Agnes Obel's dulcet tones. Whatever the source this room sounded sweet and extremely coherent, I noticed that many guests had difficulty tearing themselves away.

In the Burston Suite on the ground floor we were treated to a new phenomenon, a Naim/Focal system in public. Now that the two brands are so intrinsically linked this is likely to be the first of many and the sound it produced certainly encouraged the pursuit. This system consisted of an NDS streamer attached to a NaimNet S03 server, apparently they had run out of Unitiserves, with a NAC 552 pre and 555 power supply leaving a NAP 500 power amp in charge of the speakers. These were Focal's smallest Utopia line floorstanders the Scala Utopia. Focal's Dave Spiers and Mark Tucker were having a bit of fun spinning Kraftwerk's Autobahn on this powerful system and showing off its remarkable speed and dynamics in the process. This is not an inexpensive system but there seemed to be little that it couldn't do thanks to a precise tunefulness that made it difficult not to enjoy.

The biggest system at the event must have taken a bit of grunt work to get upstairs because it was fronted by Naim's new Ovator S800 speakers. These fully active beasts took centre stage in the Lord Gibb Suite, a dark throbbing room where all ears were focused on an immensely detailed and fully figured sound. The system chosen to drive it was fronted by an NDS with two 555 PS supplies - one each for the analogue and digital sections of the streamer. Amplification was Naim's finest, a NAC 552 controlling a SuperCap powered SNAXO 3-6 BMR crossover which sent signal to three NAP 500 power amplifiers, a six pack in the modern sense. This system did justice to whatever was thrown at it; Jeff Beck, David Gray, the Killers and many more sounded awesome.

At lunch time we enjoyed the sound of live music, local acoustic trio Bar 3, the band's combination of two guitars and a double bass proving a very palatable aid to digestion. Then Naim's Doug Graham got up and said some kind words about James who has clearly made an impression on the company that he holds so dear. The man himself followed this with a heartfelt thank you to all his customers, without whom we were told he would never have achieved his dream of playing with great hi-fi and meeting like minded enthusiasts, it wasn't quite tear jerking stuff but dangerously close. The finale came with a cake that Naim had made in the shape of a CD 555 which James enjoyed posing next to whilst weilding a large knife, we didn't get to eat the thing (more’s the pity for us cake connoisseurs!) but it was too good looking for that.

As the pictures hopefully reveal Tom Tom's tenth was a very enjoyable and convivial affair with a distinctly higher class of visitor than your average hi-fi event. I got to speak to a number of people all of whom are clearly passionate about good music and good sound, this is what James loves about his job and I can't say that I'm surprised.