Chapel Hill, NC Meet impression thread: GO HEELS! BEAT DUKE ;)

[thrice]

Post impressions here...I'll post pics later tonight.

Cheers,
thrice

PICS:



My Gear



K1000 Table




DIY Speakers in space-age polymer housing. These were super-sized



DIY Firstwatt F2





Custom PS-1 housings. Damn those look nice.

[drubrew]

Thank you Kent for bringing the Red Wine Signature 30.2 Stereo Integrated Amplifier with Wadia Cd Player playing through K1000 with my Silver Dragon Hardwire. WOW.....I spent most of the meet discussing single driver speakers and such as a result of this rig. The less junk in your signal path the better I always say and this sort of proved it. Look forward to hearing the Red Wine with some high efficiency speakers in the future. Have to go mod some CD players. More later

[manaox2]

Slipkid's PPX Slam: Very full lush sound, loved it, my type of sound. That is what I walked out looking to buy someday.

Alwayswantmore's K1000, Wadia, Sig 30.2 rig was ridiculously great. No doubts there, it was a beast from another dimension.

Swoon's Stello series was really good, but turns out not to quite be my sound. (happy about saving the money!)

packgrog's monica2 in an altoids tin was awesome to see. Wish I had thought to audition the tomahawk in my little portable shootout.

Drubrew brought some gear that was just flooring. Those refinished Grado PS1s... I'm sure he has a pic, the detail with those out of the transport is still scary.

gates_2's F2 clone was impressive to see... Very bad news there with the bad K1000 driver, good luck to you, you have the skills to pay that bill from what I saw.

The wooaudio 6 didn't disappoint from what I heard, tubes synergise well with the HD650. I think I should have brough over my portable transport to listen with it.

All of Thrice's gear sounded wonderful. I am super jealous of those ATH-W3000! Thanks for showing me the HD650 balanced. Your Beta22 was very smooth and great sound with the Senns. Very impressive difference in the tone, I will likely go that way someday if finance allows.

In my portable shootout courtesy of Drubrew, I heard from the Pico, iQube, and TTVJ millett hybrid. I used the iMod, vCap, DIY Jumbo Cryo mini, and the UE11 and ALO SR60 for reference (portable phones here).

Though not bad by a long shot, the bass wasn't as tight and full and the imaging wasn't as specific on the Pico compared to the iQube or Millett. It was also noticeably smaller and that DAC gives it an enormous reason to be proud of it.

The iQube was very impressive and a real winner for me. Its imaging astonished me and the sound was not boring neutral, but nothing was even close to overbearing. Nothing there to complain about, its sound was great, bass was tight, the amount of detail for its size was unheard of for me.

The TTVJ millett did have a fuller sound to me with very strong bass and I confirmed with a friend that the music sounded more spread out for a wider sound stage. We also agreed that the iQube won for detail, specific things like the amp feedback on "Saturday Night Special" were easily noticeable and detailed, where the Millett made it noticeably harder to pick this out.

I really wish that I had a few days to compare these amps to give a truly proper review. I could not test the AE-2 due to a dead battery. The LISA III was purposefully left out as I do not consider it in the same league in function because of size. I could probably balance six Pico side by side on its top and it was designed to properly amplify higher impedance phones like the HD650 which it does in spades.

Thanks everyone for such a wonderful time, I just wish it could have been longer. So much knowledge and music I would have liked to continue to share. I wouldn't have been able to further grow in the head-fi community without the cooperation on this meet.

[drubrew]

Crap. Had I known the battery was dead on the AE-2, I could have given you the charger That's what happens when there is too much talking going, on my part, and not enough attention to my surroundings. Feel free to come borrow all of the amps anytime. I missed getting a chance to listen to the Lisa.

[gates_2]

Great meet guys!- I'm a bit bummed about the K1K driver, but thankfully I have Drew to save the day

Here is the link to the pics:
Index of /~maw16/meet pics

Will post more impressions later- gotta run

[brotherlen]

Sorry I missed it, I passed out and woke up in a puddle of my own drool. Hopefully I'll find my way to the next one.

[Alwayswantmore]

Nice people. Nice gear. You guys made it worth the 2 1/2 hour drive!

Special thanks to Thrice for putting this together, and spending so much time introducing me to a variety of headphones and gear I had not previously heard.

Steven’s Beta 22 w/ balanced HD600s brought me back a couple years to my first real Headfi system ... when my gateway drug to K1000s was a pair of balanced HD650s, cabled with Moon Blue Dragon. I’ve had several opportunities to hear HD650/600s (both single-end and balanced), and IMO these phones greatly benefit when driven in balanced mode. Steven's Beta 22 only reinforced my bias for balanced HDs.

I had a brief listen to the wooaudio 6 tied to K701s. Considering it was front ended by a modest transport, the sound was very enjoyable. I don’t know the 701s all that well, but based on my listen would assume they benefit from the warm glow of valves.

Drew’s refinished Grado PS-1s where a high spot. Fronted by excellent sounding – yet sensibly priced DAC / Headamp and spinning digital source, the sound was extremely seductive. I could easily imagine spending an evening listing to this rig in a dimly lit room, with a glass of single malt scotch and a handful of Diana Krall’s early recordings. The bass might be a ting fat, but the seductive midrange and effortless detail and dynamics, would for me be a small slice of heaven!

I stumbled across Head-fi 2+ years ago looking to upgrade earbuds for my first iPod (G4 Video). But this meet was the first time I've had a chance to pair the iPod running lossless with my Ety ER4Ps and a portable amp. Today I had the opportunity to listen to three portables: Pico, iCube and Thrice’s unit. For starters, this was the first time that my iPod / Ety combo ever approached high fidelity, and frankly, the sound was better than I expected. All three were excellent considering their respective price points. But here is a case where $$$ did translate into results... IMO the iCube was the most natural and highest fidelity. It too was the most expensive, running several times the price of Thrice’s amp, which did a super job considering it runs slightly north of the $100 mark.

I got a few minutes with a set of Koss electrostats via my Wadia (not sure who the owner was?). Having not heard electrostats before, I assumed they might lean toward brightness, but this was certainly not the case. I enjoyed what I heard, everything was detailed and smooth. The sound was in many ways similar to what I’m used to with the K1000s, with a slightly narrower soundstage.

gate_2 let me have a run with his DIY F2 clone, Sony SACD, tube pre, and K1000s. The sound was very nice. I’ve read that FirstWatt amps benefit from tube pres, and gate’s system was a good example. Clearly the SACD rendered tons of detail, yet the sonic signature had warmth, something I personally value over detail for detail’s sake.

I’ll put out a caveat, that meets are not an ideal environment for testing K1000s. I’ll go so far as to say, even with an air conditioner running in the summer months, you lose a little something with these completely open phones. None the less, I had a chance to do a side-by-side comparison of the Signature 30.2 with the First Watt F1 (both fronted by my Wadia). The F1 is a beast, and fully deserves the reputation it has earned driving K1000s. But for my rig and my musical tastes, my vote still goes to RWA, where Sig 30.2 brings additional richness and body to everything from vocals to woodwinds.

When I bought the Sig 30, I also purchased an F1, so the rematch – now 18 months later, was very interesting for me. At time of original purchase, both units clearly had strengths and weaknesses. So it would be easy to see why a given individual might be drawn toward one or the other unit. IMO, the .2 upgrade only improves on the original Sig 30 strengths, and narrows the gap on the weaknesses.

For those that asked about battery and charge time: The 30.2 unit ran almost continually for about 4.5 hours today. When I got home, I plugged it in for a recharge. I checked back less than 15 minutes later and the unit was already back to full charge. So we barely tapped the SLA’s during the meet.

Thanks again to Thrice, and all everyone else who attended.

P.S. Drew, it was nice to finally meet you. And I enjoyed our talks on a variety of topics, from flash drives to BluRay. Also special thanks for doing the Silver Dragon V2 hardwire on my K1000s. They look and sound great. And for those who haven’t seen the SDV2, the color makes for a nice match to the K1000 headband.

[boomana]

Where are the pics? We want pics!

[amphead]

Originally Posted by boomana

Where are the pics? We want pics!

X2

[krmathis]

Looks like you guys and girl had a really nice time!
Some more pictures, besides those 10 linked to above, would be great though. he he

[Don Quichotte]

Anybody cared to compare the Firstwatt F1 and F2 driving the K1000 with the same partnering equipment? Please tell me somebody did!

More F2 clone sound impressions please!

Thank you!

[Alwayswantmore]

Originally Posted by Don Quichotte

Anybody cared to compare the Firstwatt F1 and F2 driving the K1000 with the same partnering equipment? Please tell me somebody did!

Sorry, didn't happen.

[thrice]

pics added to first post.

[n_maher]

Looks like a great meet guys.

[jp11801]

Wow looks like it was a great meet, Stephan you win some sort of prize for attending a meeting NorCal then running one 7 days later in North Carolina.

Nice k1000 amps there, I have really wanted to hear the f2 compared to the f1. It looks like that may not have been done at the meet but oh well. The f2 looks to have been hooked up to a k1000 rig any impression of that?

Where are the beer pics??