Me neither, but he kinda looks like this guy

You're not the first to say it, my wife just cracked up laughing when she saw you post that.

Reks that deserves a custom title.

Oh Nos...

Brief impressions, I didn't listen to all that much gear, which seems to be a trend with me and meets.

First up, Nikongod's HP's. I've never heard these cans before and I didn't know what to expect. I came away very impressed and these are the first Grados that I'd heard with flats that I really enjoyed. Great balance, tone and accuracy, it's easy to see why folks rave about these cans and pay the prices that they do. If I had $1200 to spend on a headphone I'd certainly go this way rather than something like the Edition 9's. And Ari's Supra sounded pretty damn good with everything that I threw at it.

Speaking of the 9's, even on Tom's rig I simply couldn't get over the overpowering bass. He said that I should give them time and get used to them so I listened for a while and then switched to something else. My impression remains the same, huge bass that destroys the rest of the listening experience. I bet these headphones would be killer for listening to movies, but for music, no thanks.

The only other headphone that I made a real effort at listening to were the W5000s. The pair at the meet were recabled by some Enigma Audio company for balanced operation . I'm currently in negotiations for a stock pair and figured that I should try and spend at least a bit of time with them and see what I might be getting myself into. I spent a bit of time with them on my meager balanced rig and well, was seriously unimpressed. I kept turning up the volume to try and get the lower mids and low frequency information to sound right, but that made the upper mids and highs just plain piercing. Listening to Joanna Newsom was a good way to highlight this. I then switched over to Ian's Millett rig since it was right next to mine and things got better so clearly synergy is something that will have to be carefully considered. The mini32 is no giant killer or world beater amp but it was sourced well and can sounded pretty darn good so it wasn't like I was feeding them crap and getting crap back. I would have really like to try the 5000's on Ari's Supra but it was busy when I had the 5's and I didn't want to hog someone elses headphones.

I also got a bit of time with Headdirect's new IEM's and clip ons. At that point of the meet it was pretty hard to make any meaningful impressions (LOUD) but what I did hear was pretty encouraging. Mostly I'll be keeping an eye on the G-1s (I think that's what they're called) as they're a clip on style headphone like the Koss 35's that I use at work right now and I wouldn't mind having another pair of decent sounding work headphones. The IEMs, which aren't named yet and still just prototypes produced a pretty amazing amount of bass for such a little thing. I was having fitment issues and the seal kept letting go so I didn't get very far in my impressions but one thing is for sure, they're hard as hell to drive. Fang had a 4G ipod and running them directly out of the headphone jack I as running the pods volume around 70% to get a normal listening level. And I tend to listen very quietly compared to other folks.

That's it for now.

Whoops, hit reply and didn't mean to do so w/o posting pics...

Tom's Krell Rig - sounded quite nice, as expected

Bunch of Woo Gear

Nikongod's toaster Supra - this is a heck of a setup, and his collection of old-school Grados is just awesome.

Ng's source for the meet, surprisingly good for a budget rig

I am now convinced that this is as real as trose gets...

The Monkey's HR gear, I still really enjoy the balanced desktop

Upstateguy's rig

Headdirect (Fang) had lots of new stuff to show

Hey, Jahn made it afterall

NYC needs to start booking bigger rooms!

lan doing his usual video thing

The Pico, holy cow the thing is tiny

Obigatory "I'm smaller than the hornet and have a DAC too" picture

Yet again, one of Ray's power supplies blew a fuse and luckily I had my jumpers with me

He doesn't look like a monkey...

Potential next headphone?

Yikes, either I didn't take as many pictures as I thought I did or somehow pictures got deleted from my camera??!??!

This place might not be slow for long if Head-Fi continues to look like this:

We apologize for the unexpected downtime. We are at the datacenter now, working hard to get the site back up. The site may be down for most of the day (Sunday, November 11, 2007), but we hope to have it up sooner.

You know, I didn't try any of the Woo gear.

oh, hmm, i definitely haven't seen that! nobody here as a picture of it?

Uploading pictures now...

If you can stretch your budget to 800ish I think you can get a refurbed Macbook.

Well, I'm not sure how many guys from here made the meet. I couldn't make it since I just had too much crap to get done. I know Nate and Ian went, but IIRC, they were talking staying over and driving back on Sunday, so I don't know if they have access to computer yet. Even if they went home after the meet, they'd getting home right about now.

I just got home now, Ian won't be home for another 25 minutes or so. We're both wrecked and I'm only typing to keep myself up long enough to drink some much needed water. Great meet, some impressions will be Casino limited. Speaking of which, The Monkey is a worthy candidate for access.

We've got a Monkey!!!

Abe, I think you'll find if you just ask a clear and complete question folks around here will be very helpful.

Reminder for my walnut cups, you guys are getting me excited about these

Funny you'd say that since we were working on them last night.

Grawk, do you think the deep cups play a big factor in your HHF-1? They always look a little awkward to me.

In my experience the depth of cup plays a huge role. A lot of Larry's pairs use standard depth cups which may make some difference but I wouldn't expect much. I would put stock HF-1s better than any of the SR series but not on par with the RS-2/RS-1.

Of course you, Jack, have friends that have been known to work with wood and Graods so you have options should you find yourself in possession of a pair of stock HF-1s.

New they were $200 + shipping.

Used stock examples have gone for anywhere from the low $300s to over $400.

HD650, HD580 (I might very well be deaf but the 2 sound virtually identical - also don't Sennheiser use the same driver and 'capsule' parts for both?)

In a word, no. The 580 shares the driver with the 600, not the 650. And if they sound virtually identical to you I don't know what to say, they certainly don't to me.

Well, its being simmered. I'll toss it on the grill after finals.

You need to concentrate on listening to more music, I have yet to see the picture in your sig have more than 4 albums in it for a week.

I choose Class D because I am a _huge_ fan of switching noise, phase shift, and bizarre, complex distortion spectra. Those things really improve my listening experience and I could not go without them.

Wow, be pretty cool if I pioneered a smiley. Problem is that it really looses effect at resolutions smaller than 60x60. Of course, this being Head-case there's no reason that we can't have a large format smiley and not limit ourselves to the typical 15x15 format.

You're kidding right?

I'd hardly call those specs high power, the mini3 puts out about 3x that much into 330ohm. I wonder how low the i-qube's output would be with a load like that?

(;..

Newb....

Less JPN/VTG, more A900Ti/A950LTD talk, please.

You know you can order the LTD direct from bluetin.com for ~$300 + shipping, right?

I bought the A950LTD when it was released, and sold it soon afterwards because I felt it would never get any listening time with the L3000 around. It is kind of a "mini L3000" in many ways, but it can't match the L3000's refinement.

With the number of headphones in your collection how does anything get any listening time?

Question is, without a good amp, why bother, though you (Nate) can build a KGSS for ~$500, or a BH for ~$1100, or so. Oh, I know there are cheaper amp options, like a SRM-T1, or one of the energizers, but that would be my choice.

It's really just something that I'm toying with and probably shouldn't even be considering. I'm certainly not looking to take on another build any time soon, I'm up to my eyeballs in crap as it is. Thanks for the input though and it certainly applies to more than my situation.