Asr

Because he is a sandwich!

From the front page of Head-Fi, a new release on HDTracks plus a discount code:

'Tis officially the season for moar music, booze, and other stuff. Just post if you're in. Newbies can refer to this thread for how things work: Sign Up! For the 2009 Annual Head-fi Holiday Gift Exchange! - Head-Fi.org Community Sign-up cut-off will be 11/21. An in-progress list of participants will be updated here until then: http://www.crystalsynth.net/hchge_2010.html

Yay Brent! I'm now expecting Round 2 of Alex vs Brent. It's time for a throw-down!

How about "buttseks"?

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I canceled another trip and have booked my flight. It had better be worth going to Tampa instead of LA!

I'm officially hungry!

Koss KSC75. Kthxbye. Not really noise-isolating tho. Or maybe the Klipsch S4? I recommend reading Head-Fi some more then. Looking for other forums won't really help you.

Ok I'm sorta confused about the "gear optional" thing. Will this "meet" be an actual meet w/ gear or more of a party, in a hotel, with friends, and food & booze? I'd hope it's the latter of course. Not really sure I can make it but I'm looking for ways to make it possible because this is shaping up to be something that looks like I shouldn't miss.

The CD player looks awesome and the price is even better! I see no mention of availability in the USA though...?

Will Dom be at this meet too?

Head-Fi.org - Headphone forums and reviews for audiophiles

More press coverage: - ComputerAudiophile: Got camera? A first-timer's trip to RMAF | Computer Audiophile - Positive Feedback: rmaf1 Also started my pics over at HF here (the rest should be up by the end of the week...maybe): http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/518094/rmaf-2010-denver-canjam-rmaf-impressions-in-case-people-missed-seeing-this-in-the-meet-forum/30#post_7016254

Are the Bel Canto DACs actually any good? I haven't read much about them. Someone needs to buy one!

My post wasn't directed at you so how about next time you don't interrupt.

Clearly my knowledge of in-state breweries has long been outpaced by far more educated drinkers. I'll have to hunt down that oak-aged imperial stout, thanks for the tip.

Uh not sure, not really good with names and my memory is hazy on that. Maybe someone else could confirm.

I liked this so much at a restaurant the other day that I decided I had to get more. Bonus: the brewery is a mere 15-minute drive from where I live. Never knew there were so many breweries in Boulder County...

Pics for HC first. Pics for HF will follow later over there. (Dinner @ Great Northern Tavern) Left to right: Marc Lavry, Jude, Drew, Steve (forgot from which company) (Dinner @ Great Northern Tavern) Left to right: Fang, NewGuy, HPA's son, HPA, Tyler's wife, Tyler, Peter, Aman Drinking @ Falling Rock Tap House Signage namesake burger @ Larkburger JP w/ an IPA @ Larkburger Late Sunday, looks like folks are tired Lamb shanks ordered @ Sahara

Stereophile just had a lot of updates to their blog this morning: Stereophile: Rocky Mountain Audiofest 2010 Dagogo: http://www.dagogo.com/View-Event.asp?hEvent=32 Stereomojo: Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2010 pt1 Still working on my pics btw, going to be at least 2 more days. Downside to taking a lot of pics is the amount of time spent post-processing them - and inevitably annotating them (not really looking forward to that part). Um even if someone did hear all 3 of those, I don't think you're going to get anything useful out of quick impressions in a show environment and from universal-fit versions. And if I were you I wouldn't bother with more than one custom IEM, especially at the prices that the ES5 and UE-R fetch for. Though I've heard the ES5 universals before they didn't totally blow me away and I wasn't really compelled to buy them in addition to my JH13 (and I didn't even pay for my JH13 either). If you were that interested in either the UE-R or the ES5, you should have traveled out to RMAF to hear them for yourself. I don't know of the next opportunity when UE and Westone will be at a meet/show simultaneously, next year's RMAF aside. (CanJam '11 is still up in the air last I heard, and I talked directly to Jude about it.)

Wow I ended up deleting more than half my pics last night for one reason or another. 101 left, and some more will be deleted too but not too many. I'm guessing I'll have the pics ready to post in about 2-3 days along with gear/show impressions. Btw, could a moderator move this entire thread to the Meet Impressions forum now that the event's over? Oh and before I forget, this was being advertised at the show: HDTracks 20% off discount code "rmaf20" (one-time use per HDTracks account, expires 10/30). Axpona 2011 (Atlanta GA, April 14-17) was also being advertised in a big way and I heard that a bunch of new vendors signed up for it, so that should be a good show next year. Did not try those, but I could (and would) have if I'd brought my MP3 player.

Recap of events/highlights: Thursday 10/14: Went straight to the airport after work to go pick up Justin and for dinner we stopped at a place called Larkburger (local chain). (Justin ate there 3 more times during the weekend that I know of, so I think it's safe to assume he really liked it.) Inside the venue Marriott we found Jude, JP, Peter, Ray & his wife, Drew from Moon Audio, and one of the UE reps (forgot his name) at the restaurant. Had some beer at the bar too and then Peter and I went over to the nearby Hilton Garden Inn hotel for the night. Friday 10/15: Set up my gear in the Head-Fi room where things were starting to roll. The vendors included HeadRoom, Ray Samuels, Ultimate Ears, Westone, Sennheiser, HeadAmp, Moon Audio, JH Audio, CEntrance, Head-Direct, Rethm Audio, and Audeze (missing a couple here, forgot who else there was). There was a promising amount of foot traffic in the room, substantially more than last year (which was nearly dead). Stayed around for a bit to check out stuff, take pics, schmooze, etc, and then after a while I ejected myself to go check out some speakers in the atrium area. The most interesting rooms I checked out were T+A w/ PMC, Emotiva, and another I'm drawing a blank on right now. For dinner we assembled a group that included Tyler/Sherwood and his wife, Aman/AmanGeorge, Peter, & Justin and headed over to a place called Great Northern Tavern. We were joined later by Larry/HPA and his son, Fang, Jude, Drew, Marc Lavry, and some other guy named Steve. We ordered a round of beer called the Left Hand Milk Stout to start that was sublime - very warm, almost creamy even. It almost was like drinking milk except of course with a better alcoholic taste. And the food was....well let's just say that once the food arrived, pretty much all conversation died. Was awesomely good and I'm pretty sure everyone else thought so too. Mike joined us part-way into dinner straight from the airport too, so it was a great crowd. After dinner we all went back to our hotel(s) but a small band of us (Peter, Mike, and JP) went to JP's room to chill and had moar beer. Peter and I later split to go to our own hotel room at the nearby Hyatt Regency but we were told they'd sold out the entire hotel - and I'd reserved the room weeks before. Long story short, we were ejected from the Hyatt Regency for the night but they completely covered a taxi and 1-night stay at another hotel down the highway plus the ride back to the Marriott for next morning. More hijinks on Saturday morning when I went back led to another thing (sold-out 2-bed rooms) but I wound up getting both Friday & Saturday nights at the Hyatt Regency for free after all the craziness so that was cool. Saturday 10/16: With a full day to use, I took advantage and spent little time in the Head-Fi room, instead quickly scampering to check out speakers. Most of the rooms are a blur now but I saved my thoughts and where I went on a notepad and in my camera respectively. Overall impression of the speaker rooms: most not bad, not like anything was really terrible, but I didn't spend too much time trying to listen in rooms that were either crowded or otherwise preoccupied. Lots of jazzy or otherwise female vocal music. There were a few rooms where I was motivated to play either Massive Attack, In Flames, or Symphony X. I skipped a lot of rooms though and didn't photograph too many either - too many to cram into one day so I moved quickly. Toward the end of the day I went back to the Head-Fi room where things had been moving slowly as I found out. I caught the seminar panel that included Jude and it was a good talk. One of the main subjects was attracting younger people into the hobby and Head-Fi was cited there, along with social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter). Another thing that was brought up was hi-res files and downloading, which someone admitted was still a niche but he saw it as a point of future expansion to attract younger people, as the conventional thinking was that "young people" prefer to download music instead of buying CDs or vinyl. Persuade more labels to put digital music out there and everyone wins, right? Well that's what these guys thought, at least. For dinner we assembled Tyler, Mike, JP, Peter, & Justin and went to the local Cherry Cricket burger joint. Larry/HPA and son joined us too. Hadn't been there before and the burgers were melt-in-your-mouth good. Very tasty. HPA and son left after dinner for parts elsewhere, and the remaining of us went over to Falling Rock Tap House in downtown where they have 40+ brews on tap. They had Pliny the Elder so I tried it and it was good. Sunday 10/17: Stayed in the Head-Fi room for a bit but left after a while to check out more speaker rooms - QUAD, Ayre, PS Audio, etc. There were a lot of rooms with speakers I saw either last year or elsewhere and wasn't really motivated to listen or take pics of those. Late afternoon I went back to the Head-Fi room and it was already halfway packed back up, so I started doing that too. We cleared out the room quickly and the last thing to go was probably the 30-foot Westone display (pics of it on Head-Fi, have my own to post later too). Dinner included Tyler, JP, Peter, & Justin at a place called Sahara in a somewhat out of the way place down the highway. Middle-eastern, Lebanese, Moroccan type food. Oh and it was really good. The lamb shanks I got were so soft & tender they were practically falling off the bone already, no need for a knife. All told it was another smashing RMAF with some killer company and plenty of alcohol for some really good times. Really enjoyed it, was a whirlwind 3 days and it was great to see everyone once again! The local turn-out was pretty good too.

I have to say that this year's RMAF/CJ@RMAF was yet another success and another fantastic time with some extremely cool people. It was definitely the few but strong - the usual Head-Fi MOTs (i.e., Justin), Peter, Mike, JP, Tyler, and Aman. The food was absolutely awesome at a select few places and the beer was flowing! Gotta thank Tyler for finding these great places to eat and drink. I especially liked the milk stout at Great Northern, now that one was really amazing and smoooooth and it went perfectly with the meatloaf I ordered. There was so much awesomeness in general at this event and I didn't want it to end, but unfortunately some things must come to an end. Kudos to JP and Jude for pulling off yet another awesome event in the Mile High City. Definitely going to remember this one, thanks all. Peter: it was cool to hang out with you the most, for obvious reasons. Really enjoyed it. More will be coming later of course, as usual. This time I made sure to come up with a variety of HC-exclusive pics. 200+ pics on the camera, guessing about a third of them will be posted.

Tyler/Sherwood might have something in mind for tomorrow night, but barring that I'd think someplace in either Park Meadows or Cherry Creek could work (better parking than downtown and they're closer). You guys have any particular food preferences? Edit: just remembered Mike posted about Cherry Cricket earlier in the thread, could go there.