Meet Impressions

Wow another great mini at Craig's house, I wanted to come down to hear Joe's (Dreamcomposer) balanced Zana and A/B with the HD-2 that I own. Well I got to do that and a whole lot more. Rounding out the amp line up was Eddie Current HD2 Eddie Current Balanced Zana Duex Eddie Current balancing act (prototype) We also had a singled ended Zana and a EC proto amp with C41 power tubes that sounded great. David (909) was nice enough to bring his amazing source the Reimyo 777 CDP, if you get the chance this is one great sounding source. We also had the pleasure of going back to the future and hearing to well regarded linear tracking turntables from the late 70/80s the Sony…

Had a portable mini-meet a few weeks ago with mrarroyo and Vorlon1, and got together again today with mostly the same gear. Though maybe not much to interest folks here, I thought I'd do a quick take on a few things I've now listened to a couple times. Both meets were pretty budget-fi meet, which is kind of nice. Anyway, here goes with mini-impressions: Sources were three imods (4g) and a nano. Portable amps: Graham Slee Voyager - bass and bass and full mids and bass. Not good bass, but BASS. I didn't like it. I do like separation between notes and that was missing. ibasso P2 - yuck. Very congested. ibasso D2 - didn't try out the dac since everyone assumed some…

Just copying what I wrote on the other site minus the not so witty banter Rigs and stuff I was impressed with- Audio Research transport - Benchmark DAC 1 - Singlepower Supra - Balanced HD 650 One of the best dynamic rigs at the meet and I spent a lot of time with this one. The overpowering bass that the 650s usually have were nicely diffused. The soundstage was the biggest I've heard from Senns. They were nice and neutral, got everything right. I cant say anything bad about them, except that they werent grados. Really kicked the Apache's butt in everyway. Cary 300/303 - Stax 007t - Stax Omega 2 This was one of the few times that I spent a lot of time with an el…

The meet has begun. Here are some early pics at Gate 19 Houston Airport:

Well, noboody else seems to be starting the impressions thread so here goes. I just left JP11801 and Iron_Dreamer at the Englander Pub where Peter steadfastly refused to consume alcohol. We have to work on that and maybe provide a travel couch to see what this kid has in him. Great vibe at the meet, and it was not just the coffee jitters. Yergecheffe rulez! The meet was great fun and the stalwart 15 or so who showed up were treated to some of the best available headphone rigs. It was especially cool because nobody was feeling it necessary to strut their gear as everyone with a rig was comfortable in their own choices. It was particularly cool to have an outside…

The meet's still in progress, so no real impressions to speak of. I just figured I'd check in. I'm hosting, and there's a lot to be said for not having to break down and set up my rig somewhere else! The group here is myself, Vince (n_maher), Dave (drp) and Haj (Salt Peanuts). I'm sure we'll get to the equipment present, impressions and pics later. For now? Back to listening!

HOW WAS IT!?!?! Where are your impressions?

There was quite a bit of uncertainty as HF is down and the attendees had no way to communicate with the organizers. I am sure bhjazz, who organized the meet, was nervousrs about whether people would actually show up. I arrived 30 minutes late, and there were only 4 people, including myself. But soon thereafter, most of the attendees arrived and another great meet was had. Based on my conversations with several people at the meet, I may have been the only Head-Caser in attendance. In other words, this thread may turn out to be a one-man impression thread. I did tell a few people about HC, so we'll see. Sorry, Brian. I couldn't wait until HF came back online to do th…

Nice to see everyone today. USG, thanks very much for the name tags; they turned out great.

Hi Guys It was a great meet. I always enjoy everyone's impressions. First off, it was too bad trose49 couldn't make it. I was looking forward to meeting him. n_maher, on the other, hand did make it and he brought some great sounding stuff Nate was nice enough to open the Herstens DAC so we could have a peak inside it was hard to compare the balanced mini M^3 to the one I brought because Nate was feeding it from an Arcam into his "Hertsens" DAC and I was going optical out of a Shuttle computer to a Constantine DAC..... but I'll leave it to those who are not as affected by placebo effect as I am to report on the sound.... I thought …

This was my first meet, and my camera shat the proverbial bed a few weeks ago, so no pix for me. I spent most of mine time hanging out and bumming around/talking to people, but did get to listen to a few things along the way. I went down there with the the intent to listen to a Millett Max (something which I'm thinking of purchasing). Let's see... there was Fitz' AKG collection, which was just massive (maybe 35-40 pairs?), and I believe they were all out of production (or at least most of them were). I just listened to the K1000's, as I knew it was something I wouldn't consider purchasing due to price, so there were no worries of me trying to sell my soul to obtain…

Yesterdays meet at Earl's was a good time as usual. Here's the obligatory gear pics:

Here are my impressions from our meet. I had a great time at the meet, as well. I was able to see some old friends like robm, rhythmdevils and asr (who did a great job of organizing). I also got to meet some new people, and put faces to some names that I?ve seen around on the boards. RSA Apache: I heard this amp using the Ayre CX7e and it was a completely underwhelming experience. This was the first thing I listened to and I spent over 30 minutes on it. It simply did not engage me in any way shape or form when I was using my 580s and listening to some CDs I had brought with me. The sound was extremely dull and devoid of dynamics, especially with Eric Clapton Un…

This topic has been moved to The Casino. [iurl]http://www.head-case.org/index.php?topic=1852.0[/iurl]

I got a call this morning about a meet which I'd discussed in passing a few weeks ago and then promptly forgotten about. We listened to a stock RS-1, my K340, and a modded RS-1 along with a Grado 225. The rest of the gear list is as follows: modded Audio Aero Capitole Naim CD5x modded Denon 650F EML 20B & 2A3 tube amp SinglePower MPX3 w/6BL7's my experimental tube amp The short summary. The MPX3 was not as good as I expected, I thought it would at least hold its own against my tube amp but it got beaten in all respects once I swapped 6BL7 tubes into my amp. The Naim and my Denon are quite similar in terms of sound signature, but the Naim has more resolution …

I'm currently taking a break from a mini-meet, it got pretty intense and my friend & I are taking a break to go grab some food and catch up on things a bit before returning to the listening. A little teaser, we have a modded Audio Aero Capitole, a custom built 2A3 amp, and a balanced RS-1 recabled with copper litz wire. For shits & giggles, we decided to compare a regular store bought CD (Tori Amos - Boys for Pele) with a CDR copy burned on a Fujifilm CDR. I've heard people saying CDRs sound better but never heard a difference on my system, so since we had a top-notch system at our disposal we decided to test it out. Shockingly, the CDR sounds better, and I was li…

link So, who are these people? I know pic #2 is Jude; #8 is Mikhail; #11 is Tyll; #13 is Ray. #6, is that Pete Millet? #12 (the other one, not Tyll)? #16, I haven't a clue -- Steve Nugent? The EFF guy and the Ultimate Ears guy are pretty obvious.

Me & philodox met up at a local store yesterday where he was introduced to vinyl and had Massive Attack ruined for him. I'll let him fill in the rest of the details, but suffice to say, we had a fun time listening to cool music & gear.

Myself and two other head-case'ers had a listening session this sunday just past. I had a great time forcing all my music down their throats, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. I gave Micah [Redleader] my headroom hat as it doesn't fit my massive head. The picture of Nick [datamorph] didn't turn out all that well due to my poor camera skills... man I need a tripod. Here is another one of Nick that was taken with his ghetto camera. He had to beat the crap out of it to get it to turn on and it was making weird noises. NOTE: I'm not sure if datamorph is registered here, but redleader is I believe.

The short version. The various Chinese tube amps need a way to set the channel balance, every single one had horrible channel imbalances which fucked over the soundstaging & imaging. I don't know if it's crappy QC or bad tubes, but it wasn't pretty. It drove me nuts and I couldn't listen to them much, so no real impressions on them. Philodox's new amp is great with high impedance ?phones, but I suspect it was current starving the Grados. Normally I need to turn the volume way down when going from Senns to Grados, but with his amp I had to keep the volume knob at nearly the same setting. The amp was brand new so I hesitate to make any definitive comments on it, it s…

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/hirsch_d Here's a few (OK, 189) pics taken at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Basically, lots of very good sound, but little that reached greatness (and a good deal that was absolutely awful). I'm still recovering.

1) Stax Omega 2: I really liked these headphones; they have IMO the bigggest soundstage in a headphone other than the K1000s. I didn't find it to be too bassy out of the ES-1, although the impact was not up to the level that I would consider satisfactory for hard rock. But these have very good timbre, and the tonality is a little bit dark, but nothing to really complain about. I would not hesistate to build an O2 system if not for the fact that I just can't get them to fit right. I tried rotating the cups and the cushions every way, but just never found a good fit. 2) Orpheus: Between the Orpheus and the O2, I'd say it's a toss up when both are amped out of an ES-1. I co…

and that is all there are so dont ask for more

All you need to know is that Yikes came, cleaned up on the door prizes, implied I was deceptively short, and left.

Biggie hosted an Oakville meet today. I'm still working on my impressions file but here's the quick summary. Lavry Black is good, but not as good as tubes. HF-1 is better than last time, probably amps & break-in. My tube amp needs more work or better tubes. The Senn 650 at this meet has way more bass than the other 2 650's I've heard in the past. The K701 doesn't have enough bass. The 2 pairs of K340's are getting closer in sound, but still rather different. The PS-1 still remains my favourite headphone. The SR-60 is the best headphone for the price ever. People who say "Grados have no soundstage" need new batteries for their hearing aids, or they need hearing aids in…