The days are passing and I am not having any free time, so I will make an effort right now and try to write something.
In first place I want to thank again all the attendees for coming to the meeting in spite of the bad weather and distance (marianitu). It really was a nice meet and a good opportunity to try some equipment I was interested like the shure e500. It is true that we did not listen a lot, but the hours we passed talking were equally rewarding.
Shure e500: these were not a surprise because everybody in headfi is doing rave reviews about these IEMs, but hearing is believing
. The e500 are the first IEMs I listen that could be my only headphones if I would have to live without any full sized ones. They have a full sound with well founded lows, great extension and what is equally important, impact. Mids are a strong point of these IEMs too, sweet and refined. Vocal music is a joy to listen. I was able to focus in several songs of Camille's "Le Fil" fascinated about the capabilities of these little marvels. Maybe the highs are not as "extreme" as in other IEMs, but I don't find them less "detailed". I think I found a certain similitude between e500 and sennheiser HD650: both have a warm and lush sound that distract from their highs (by the way, I don't find HD-650s "veiled"). Of course they have different sound (e500, being IEMs, doesn't have any soundstage, for example), but in my opinion they share some traits that define their profile. I'm not a big fan of IEMs, but if I had to buy ones, they would be shure e500s.
"Ricola" cmoy: picodeloro constructed a nice cmoy with good sound. I compared it with marianitu's one made by evilfire, and it was clearly better. Strong mids. Not bad at all with my Darth Beyers and pretty good with e500. Some day he will have to make one for me...
AKG K701 and K601: These ones were not expected. Mr. Portela surprised us in the middle of the meeting bringing out one pair of each
. They were new, clearly needed burn-in and showed a somewhat rough and incoherent sound, maybe even harsh highs. But I liked their general profile. I am a long-time fan of K501 and I am not going to say that the new ones are a clear improvement
. I think K501 is a classic design with a clear value of its own. But certainly these two new AKG could satisfy to everybody who is looking for something with fuller, more bassy sound, especially in the case of K701. I will try to listen to these two again in the future.
HD-650 defoamed, Stefan AudioArt Equinox cable: I'm not going to comment a lot about this one because they were my own pair
. With the MPX3+Aqvox DAC were clearly the kings of the party, at least in my opinion. Better than K701s, but this is not a fair comparation because they had 0 hours of use.
Little Dot II+: This amp has some modifications made for picodeloro. He could detail what they are. I only passed a few minutes with it and my grado HF-1 listening some acoustic music. The result was nice, sweeter and more "tubey" than MPX3. Much more slower too. I think Jltower liked a lot this combination. He was the most impressed by the grado sound in the meet (there is always one
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) and a lot of work yesterday, finally I found some time to write my impressions.
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