VPI

As usual, I did not listen to much at the meet. It was much quieter this year than last at this location so I did try to listen to a few systems. I spent some time with the Woo two piece single ended amp (WA5?) and it is just as good as I remembered it being. I listened to the HiFiman little portable thing with my JH13s and if i could get over the size, weight and looks this would really be an excellent portable source. Maybe a carry on amp that can be used as a Hotel system but probably too difficult to carry as a commuter rig. Dinny brought quite a bit of gear and I enjoyed being able to compare the Dodson DAC to the Bryston. For my ears, the Dodson was the winner in Dinny's system. I want one of the little Manley skipjacks! I listened to Nate and Colin's amps with the woodied HF-1s and found them both to be excellent. I thought it was funny that while Nate's amp only takes a few tubes he brought 800 spare tubes just in case. Also I have to thank Nate because if he hadn't shown up with a power strip/box I would have had my system on static display only as I forgot mine. I also listened to the HifiMan HE-5 headphones on Colin's amp and I thought this was a very good pairing, better than my M^3 with these headphones. I actually listened to some of Colin's music and was surprised to find that it was actually pretty good. Some red head singer that I can't remember. I did not get to hear any Jesus and the Dufuses unfortunately. It was good to see everyone again and I look forward to seeing many of you again in a few weeks in Florida.

Had a great time spending the day with Nate, Ian, Ari, Dinny, Tom, et al at the NY Meet. To make it even better I brought home HF-1 #10 to match my #10 HF-2. Freshly turned NH style Wenge deep bowls and leather headband make these even better! Got to spend some time listening to Nate's new amp, Colin's new amp, Ari's new amp and Dinny's Beta 22 and the 12 DACs he brought to the meet. Ari took lots of pictures with his new camera so I assume he will be along soon to show all the toys.

Happy Birthday. I am going to go against the trend and hope that someone gets you a turntable for your birthday so you can put all the DAC stuff behind you once and for all.

My DACs like pudding.

I am in. I really enjoyed this last year.

I have reserved judgment until I can connect the ULN-2 to my main system. I definitely prefer the interface of the PS Audio. If John had not been around to tell me how to set it up I probably would have given up.

FTFY

More Hi-Res tracks. Various - 4 Generations of Miles - Chesky Larry Coryell Organ Trio - Impressions John Pizzarelli - My Blue Heaven McCoy Tyner Quartet - New York Reunion Lincolnshire Posy - The Dallas Wind Ensemble Sara K - Play on Words Steve Vai - Where the Wild Things Are

I would actually prefer to have a phone with no camera as they are a pain when you visit a lot of very private entities. I actually got a two lap ride along in a new 640 HP ZR-1 that was awesome and took several corners at about the same speeds I was driving on the straights.

Phoenix

It was. I definitely will do this again in the future.

Spent all day racing Corvettes on a road course and in an autocross set up. Forgot to bring a camera this weekend so all I have is a crappy cell phone camera of my car that I took when we shut down for the day tonight. Got the same number as my HF-2s.

Flew out to Phoenix for a weekend at Bondurant Driving School, and much drinking. Probably not at the same time.

John helped me set it up and I am listening to it through Mac Mini>Amarra>ULN-2>Cheap TRS-XLR cable>Toole Audio M^3> HD-800s. No comparisons until I get it on the big system but the sound is excellent out of the box.

Okay I got the thing out of the box and I am working to set it up. I assume I will use the basic mixer or do I need to do a custom mixer to set it up for firewire input, analog out and aes/ebu pass through? I will keep digging through but if someone has an easy answer I would appreciate it.

Al, what do you think of the sound of the new version. Is it different than the previous version? I almost think there might be a bit more detail. The Weiss DAC2, which I think is a bit syrupy/smooth, sounds better with this version than I remember with the previous.

Did you buy one? I was just reading the manual and thinking how very well written it was for a piece of pro audio gear. I might have to run to Sam Ash to get some temporary cables for this thing and try it out this weekend.

Go into the Amarra folder in the Applications folder and double click on uninstall, then you delete the folder.

You can always download the player and run in demo mode. Kind of annoying that it cuts out once per minute for a few seconds but it will at least tell you if it can run on your Mini.

Any luck on the Beta front? I would definitely like to try it out as well but the website forum just has a Beta program for the iPhone recording software. I still have not seen anything that says a single thing this software will do so I guess the Beta testers have not seen it yet either.

It looks like I bring in a file and then can resample it to anything from 44.1 to 192.

There is no reason to believe the Audiophile Engineering software will use any less than the 500mb that Amarra uses. That said, it will be using a less advanced tool to do the work so it could certainly require less.

I would recommend for the upgrade that you uninstall Amarra first and don't think that installing the new version will overwrite all parts of Amarra. I just installed it the first time and while it appeared to just replace the old version I had a lot of trouble with selection of sample rates. After doing it the right way it seems to be back to normal. There is also a new sample rate converter software built in that apparently lets you edit files to other sample rates. Don't know why that would be useful but it is there.

Dinny, Haven't taken it out of the box yet. I should get a care package from Nate in the next couple of weeks that will let me use it.

I know it is probably just in my head but I think the new version might actually sound better than the previous version.