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Cincinnati Meet - Saturday, August 5th


tkam

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Here is a picture of Earl and Todd during the Pizza food fight.

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This is a picture of all of Todds equipment.

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Here is a picture of Earl's equipment.

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Here is a picture of Jackobs equipment.

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Here is a picture of my equipment.

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And there you have a good idea of the best of what was there. :dance:

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Guest sacd lover

First, this was another extremely fun meet .... GREAT PEOPLE. Lots of time to talk AND to listen. :laugh:

Add me to the list of those smitten with the AT L3000. The L3000 gives you EVERYTHING you could want from a headphone. :P The Opus 21> SLAM ppx3> L3000 was my favorite combo of the meet. The SLAM Todd has is one of the best amps I have come across having a warm and rich tone but with speed, punch and a sense of effortlessness. This version of the SLAM with a Plitron transformer, ECC32 gain tube (very nice) and the high voltage 6bx7gt tubes got the job done in a big way. The Opus is so natural sounding and so refined and composed but so dynamic. I kept ending up here all day. I absolutely loved this combination!!! :-*

I had fun with Jacob trying out some of the new tubes. I think he would agree the Raytheon 5814a is a really good choice for the gain tube in the SLAM. The 7119's worked very well as output tubes and seemed to have plenty of power for even the HP-2's. The Sylvania 6gu7 was another good gain tube that made the airier and more detailed without being to bright. these new tubes cost $5-6 each with the exception of the 7119's which run $15-20 each.

I spent time with the grado GS1000 .... and I dont think this phone is for me. The GS1000 sounded really bad out of the EC 2A3 and not much better out of the Zana or Reks SLAM ppx3. The only amp I liked the GS1000 with was Todd's SLAM. But the sound still didnt connect completely. The treble seems to tizzy .... maybe splashy is a better word. In the end I dont think I could ignore this flaw. I tried the W5000 and this time something just sounded off. The mids were to forward with respect to the rest of the frequency spectrum and even the SLAM setup couldnt make the 5000 sound right. Mikey01's recabled dt880 (2006) was another good listen, again with Todd's SLAM. The new 880 seems much better balanced sounding just the slightest bit overly detailed. Mikey01 modded the phones driver covering in addition to the recable; just the recable only might make the phone what I want. Still .... I have never heard an 880 sound this balanced and warm.

Mikey recables all his phones and the beyer 931 was quite good .... definitely better than I expected. The recabled 701 was better overall vs the stock 701 .... IMO. But again the recabled 880 was by far my favorite Mikey phone. I was very pleasantly surprised by reks modded grado sr-80. To be honest .... dons flame suit .... I liked this sr-80 better than the GS1000. The sr-80 had the same warm, punchy low end and more of the distinctive grado mids without the splashy treble. I went home with this headphone .... thanks again Reks this made my day. :dance:

The Zana was her usual warm powerful self. I love the look of those 6C33's. I did hear some sibilance on both the 701's and the 931. There was a little brightness to the top I hadnt noticed before but the sound came around once I slipped in the Senn 595/ black dragon recable .... and then there was just a slight touch of etch. Robert Randolph's ... Press On sounded great on the Zana. I like the Zana best of the EC amps for sure.

I wish I had the black 9100es like Mikey's instead of the silver. This player is my favorite of the sacdmods units I have and the 9100es was as good as usual. Interestingly .... we tried a DVD-A in the sacd player and it worked. Unless the player is playing the dts layer??? Regardless, Hotel California sounded awesome. The Denon 3910?? was equally good on a short listen but Mikey tells me he thinks the Denon is better. I liked both players and would be happy with either. I wanted to put the 9100es on the Zana .... but I never got around to asking. :-X

At the end of the meet .... the find of the meet for me had to be the AT L3000. The bass on this phones goes deeeeppp! The mids are near perfect and the highs are refined and very well integrated .... and the comfort and fit are top notch. Man .... why do these have to cost so much!! :'(

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Well the cat is out of the bag. If you have DVD-A you can buy a Sony and still use them.

I would load up more pictures but something happened to the camera and the remaining pictures were of my vacation. Unless you want to see a picture of me in my new two piece bathing suit ,standing in the sand, holding a fresh caught Mackrel.

Thanks to Roh's Street Cafe for having us and also to note, they make one heck of a cup of coffee. They make them fancy kind of coffee's too like "HooDeh Cream Latie" and "HeadCase-MedCase Exspresso".

The most notable event of the day were the presence of the four, yes count em four, LOVELY YOUNG LADIES that stopped by and spent the whole day. :dance: The tall one in the long blue denium skirt had a thing for me so I chit chatted a we bit and gave her my autograph and told her she is not my type. ::)

I know Todd's hand was sore too from all thoes autographs.

I was able to give a better listen to Todds two cdp's, the one of which I had never seen before. Forgive me but I don't remember the name of the two piece unit. But it and the Phillips 1000 (APL tube modded) were the best. The Phillips was a tad warmer while the other was a tad more detailed. But both were excellent. Todds Slam is even better than Jackobs with a very expensive Mullard tube. It had a very high end sound.

I was blown away by Earls AKG K81 (??if I got that right) headphones and the pint. It was excellent for a small unit and a tidy small headphone.

Jackobs slam was wonderful as always but I ignored the modded Grado's. I did knot know that they were special. Jackobs DAC was sounding very spot on as well.

I did not share the feelings toward AT 3000's as everyone else. The midrange sounded like it was not as natural as it should be to me. I did find a headphone there that could unseat me favorite Beyer DT 990's and that was the Grado 1000's. This is the first comfortable and proper sounding Grado I have heard to date. It may well be better than the DT 990's but $730 better the the DT 990's, hummmmmmm.

I snatched up Earls Senn 595's with the Black Dragon cable to play with for awhile and maybe it will be a keeper. Needs more study.

Well there you have it. ;D

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As usual it was a fun time and it was nice to see everyone again. Oh and thanks to Adam for the donuts :). The new DT880s sounded quite nice. The treble is toned down a bit from the older models and they actually have some decent bass :). They easily compete with the 650s for the best phone in that under $500 range. I'd like to hear the new DT990s at some point as they also look quite interesting. The HP2's were great as they usually are, I really liked them with that 6gu7 tube in the gain spot that Earl brought along. It was nice to hear the zana deux again it really is a hell of an amp.

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I suppose it's too much to ask to have one of the lazy mods fix it for us, eh? ;D

This was a really fun meet. Some impressions...

I liked the W5000s more than I did last time. I probably won't end up with a pair, but I definitely enjoyed them this time around. I can't same the same for the L3000. It's hard for me to describe exactly what it is I don't like about these. They seem pretty balanced, but just plain bizarre to my ears. Almost like I'm wearing them upside sound -- out of whack. I wonder, though, whether this is something my ears/brain would adjust to if I listened to them for a while. It's a moot point, however, I can't afford them. :)

I liked the GS-1000s save for the bass. It's just a bit too much for me. Also, the bass didn't seem as detailed as the PS-1 bass. A bit mushy if you ask me. The mids and highs were quite nice. These are certainly the most comfortable Grados I've listened to, but comfort is still a step behind the other circumaurals -- AKG, Beyer, Senn. The soundstage is good, a shade better than the RS-1s, but I prefer the soundstage of the AKG 701. All in all a pretty good headphone.

Earl made a valiant attempt to get my to buy a tube amp. And I did really like the PPX slam, but practial considerations control. The toddler, who loves all of my electronics anyway, would absolutely LOVE the pretty glowing tubes. Plus, I would probably get obsessed with tube rolling, which is even worse now that you have all those adapters and "alternate" tubes. Finally, my listening is so disjointed these days -- a few minutes here, a few there -- that a tube amp just doesn't seem practical. Oh well.

Also, I'm not sure when the next meet is, but we may have some AKG 601s to listen to by then.

Jacob and I swapped CD players. I think it should be a good trade for both of us. Oddly enough, the remotes are not compatible apparently. How strange.

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