Santiago de Compostela (Spain) Mini-Meet III - November 24th, 2007 - Impressions

Here we are with another edition of the Santiago de Compostela Mini Meet . This one was celebrated during the Head-Fi outage with the bad luck that we had to change the local a few days before the meet. Several head-fi members showed their interest in coming, but unfortunately we had no means of contacting them. Excuse us for the inconvenience.

These impressions are the translated summary of the ones in spanish, published in Auriculares.org, the brand new forum about headphones in spanish language. Please, forgive me my bad grammar . Here you have the link to the original.

If you want to hear about our past meetings, here you have the links

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f45/sa...ssions-240128/
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f45/sa...ssions-202396/

This meet was special because Rodrigo (Picodeloro) brought several prototypes of his last Picaudio projects. These are of very high quality and I wish to hear what he will be doing in a year (maybe balanced? I wish). For me it was a very different meet because I hardly listened to the gear. And I say hardly, maybe no more than 2 hours in all day. Of course this is nice too, because it means that I had the opportunity of talking a lot with friends that I only see a few times per year. We have started to talk about a meet of more than one day, and maybe it will be nice to do so in the future.

Let's start with th impressions. The meet took place in the suite BC2 of the Hotel Área Central, which has a big room with sloping ceiling. It was a pity that the room had not enough sun light, but it was nice in general terms.

The morning passed at light speed due to the explanations of Rodrigo about his amps. I had no opportunity of listening to them during the morning because they were being used at all times . Anyway I was focused in listening what it was my big discovery of the day: the K501 with K701 pads. And what a discovery! This combo is wonderful. With only a change in pads, the K501 becomes a much better headphone. It holds the K501 strong points (space, warmth, sweet detail) but addreses its main drwaback: a light bass. With these pads the bass is very similar to the K701's one.

The lunch took place in the El Mercadito restaurant. During the lunch we talked about the creation of the Auriculares.org forum. There are many spanish speaking people in head-fi that cannot participate in discussions because the language barrier. We will try to offer them a nice place to exchange points of view without losing the head-fi spirit. Think about Auriculares.org like the Head-Fi spanish section . The forum started to accept members today, so be understanding. We are all new in this business .

After the lunch I had the opportunity of spending some quality time with Picaudio gear. Some impressions:

• Altair: The Altair is a low budget amp that will be make to order, targeting newbies. Rodrigo has no final price yet, but it aims to be a lot cheaper than the Heed Canamp, but with similar sound quality. Ambitious, mmm? We will see. Rodrigo will lend a prototype to me to compare with my Heed Canamp and I will tell. This amp has a nice feature: you will be able of changing easily the caps to tailor its sound to your preferences.
• Millet Hybrids: Both were maxxed up Millets and they sounded very good. Rodrigo will not be selling them in the future. Millet boards are too difficult to find.
• iRods. The iRod is a variant of iMod . Unlike iMod, Rodrigo welds the cable directly to the DAC outputs (magical ability, I tell you), and theoretically the signal is purer. Rodrigo says that the difference with the iMod is nonexistent or very difficult to pinpoint, but it is interesting for those of you that only want the best. The iRod is the best possible. He can connect the dac to the headphone out in 5G ipods too. You still need caps though.

And of course, the photos:

Several headphones present:




The black and white iPods are the iRods by Picaudio



Singlepower Tower



Picaudio amplifiers



Altair




Millet Hybrids








Listening

¡Let's have lunch!











A photo of part of the menu. We had the tasting menu, with reduced portions of several dishes. I think we had Salmonete rebozado de maíz crujiente como entrante, Huevo cremoso con espuma de patata y pisto, Merluza de Celeiro confitada con su pil pil, Foie gras y risoto trufado y Carrillera de vaca del país estofada al vino Mencía. I cannot translate the terms, you will understand . I cannot remember well the two desserts, but it was delicious. The first was inspired in the tipycal baby food here in spain, with orange sorbet, caramelized torrija and a touch of plátano (small and spotted banana from Canary islands, much tastier than the big south american banana). To drink, Castro de Valtuille, my favourite wine from El Bierzo. Yum!



Back to listening some music. Note the pleasure faces after a good meal




Pure poetry



Mmmm... This Altair is something...



Group photos before leaving:




Views to the mall from the suite:



That's all folks! Thanks for coming.

Yes, it was veal slowly cooked in mencía wine. It was delicious!

Voltron, I thought the same too! It seems that we always meet on the same dates . We need to make something official about this sister cities issue . By the way, your rig looks awesome. This SDS XLR is really something. I hope I will get something like that in the future.

mrarroyo, next time we will make some pictures of the food only for you . At least you will have a virtual lunch...

And talking about nosh... Next time we probably organize a traditional galician lunch, the cocido gallego (galician stew). It's a pantagruelic dish we usually prepare a lot around february. Prepare yourself for some terrific photos!

And it's still a protoype