Chicago Mini Meet 4/19 Picture and Impressions thread.

Damn, thanks for the ride Billy!

EDIT: also thanks to Cry Havoc for coordinating the meet, and Skylab for hosting.

and great meet. I'll post more later- need to set my system back up.

but quickly..

The Good:

K340's out of the Zana
DX1000's & Darkvoice combo
HP1000's (?) - out of the HP-2 and my Millett
HD600's from Ray's Raptor
R10's from the B-52

plus more I forgot about

The not so Great (but not necessarily bad):

Beyer 990's (?)
RS-1's (buttonless)
AKG 701's
ESW9's
HFI-780

Yeah, I'll be uploading a bunch tomorrow, along with my general impressions.

All of you guys (and girls ) are so fantastic. I feel blessed to simply have met you all.

Rob - you were so helpful. You'll be happy to know that I'll be shooting for JVC DX1000's sometime in the future .

It was GREAT having all of you guys over. I had a lot of fun!

We didn't get a lot of pix, but here are the few we did get:


In gear central, from L to R: Aura, VeipaCray, Absorbine Sr., Morphsci, GFL


Me, CryHavoc, Morphsci, Absorbine Sr.


xnothingpoetic filling in the door prize ticket with my daughter while Aura listens to the DT990's:


A discussion about Vinyl :


xnothingpoetic and Morpsci deep in discussion:


Absorbine Sr listens to the S.E.X. while Ray Samuels takes some pics:


Gear!


bhd812 and his friends discussing said gear:

I also would like to thank Cry Havoc and Skylab for organizing and hosting the meet.

Like always, it is always good just to get together and talk with fellow Head-Fiers. I probably did that more than listen. The B-52 with the R-10s is definitely a great combo as I did seem to keep going back for a listen to it.

The surprise for me was the Predator. This was really the first time I had a chance to listen to it. I was surprised by the sound coming out of it through the RS-1s. Ray indicated it was voiced with his G08, which is also what I have so no wonder I like it.

Thanks to Skylab and his awesome family for inviting us into his home. Rob, his wife and kids are a true class act. They laid out a snack spread that was unbeatable, beverages galore and even did a coffee run. Amazing!

Thanks to Cry Havoc for organizing the shindig. He did a great job, but is way too enthusiastic about basketball...

Great to talk to morphsci, GLF, Vlad, Audio Addict, VeipaCray, Ray, Billy, Recstar, Germania and others. As always I did more talking than listening.

I did take some pictures and will try and post them tomorrow.

Highlights were morphsci's Headphiled AKG K340's out of my own Zana. This is a killer can. Let the search begin....

And I was a little bummed to hear vintage RS1's compared to my new ones. There is a difference. Not that the new ones sound bad, but they are not as good as the older model.

And GLF, your Bottlehead is an astounding little amp. Though I'll never admit it in public , it might just be better with Senns than my amp. Nice work. It's a great rig.

All in all, maybe the best meet I've attended.

A_Sr.

Man, lots of nice gear and people. I look forward to more pics and impressions on the Sex Amp.

more pics.

And who's who in the pics....

I know I saw Ray....

USG

d-_-b

And from the looks of it, Ray should have some good pics!

No Well they say America is reading less and less...pictures soon enough.

First things first - thank you to Rob and your wonderful wife for having us over. You have a beautiful home, and your generosity with drinks and overall accomodations were fantastic. Your kids are awesome, they are extremely well behaved and polite and I enjoyed chatting with them. They even got to show me their rigs. Your wife was also really nice and I enjoyed chatting with her, must be great to have a wife so supportive of your hobby and passion for music and hifi. Your listening room was fantastic, love the speakers and the whole setup. But I thought the best thing was the amount of music you have, amazing, all organized too. You my friend are a true music lover.

Great to see some old familiar faces and meet some new people. Mike and Steve, pleasure as always. Billy, it was great to see you bud and chat, I am really glad we got to catch up (don't be a stranger now Nice meeting morphsci, GLF, vberch, germania, aura, and the organizer Cry Havoc.

Gear impressions - honestly didn't listen to a lot of stuff. Really I am more into the getting to know fellow headfiers and chew the fat. I did spend a chunk of time with the SP extreme, what a nice sounding amp, really fantastic. Got to hear a Resolution opus, Mike's source with his zana, wow! THat is an excellent source, very punchy and dynamic but smooth and plenty of tone and body, really had no issues with its sound, just a great performer. Got to hear a bottlehead sex for the 1st time and was impressed, its a nice sounding amp with both grados and senns. That's about it on my end, I came late as I had to take care of some car issues, but glad I was able to make some of it.

Not too many pics from me, but better than nothing.





Great sounding amp, always dig the extreme when I have a chance to listen



Bottlehead SEX - nice musical sound, easily worth the price of admission if you can find it used and built by a decent builder.



Millet Hybrid and some cool woodied sr80's. This was more for Billy to show of his modeling skills.



Zana and Opus - great sounding combo



Rob's tube closet...umm, I have like 3 in my drawer, yeah.

Rob, thank you SO much for your hospitality! It was a truly great meet, the best I've ever been to! Your listening room is an inspiration, really! Oh, those B&W's! I am also very grateful to your wife for putting up with us! She is a saint!!!

It was wonderful meeting all of you! I took a bunch of pictures and will post them in the morning. Thank you!

OK, some of my impressions.

I discovered that I am NOT at all a basshead. I would prefer a clear smooth treble with lots of sparkle (but not fatiguing...I know).
What I gained:
- an appreciation for Darths and Beyer-like derivatives (DX1000 and D5000/2000)
-A desire to build a S.E.X. amp.
-My Fav Grado: HP1
-A strong feeling that I am going to start building a lot of stuff
-Better understanding of tube differences/types
-Depodded versus Podded is a huge jump (A/B) and made it sound scary close to the Ety4.
-The Raptor jived really well with both my k400 and HD590, but not so much with the HR-2.
-Predator + ESW9 = Smooth- they seemed to be exceptionally well matched to each other and this would make a great road warrior setup.
-LP's are very forseable
-SR-003: While I see myself getting Stax at some point, I just couldn't get a comfy fit with these and I really wished they sounded like SR-Lambdas! (then I could maybe afford them soon)
-Time for me to move to a better source (computer).
-Meet new people and make new friends.

Well, if you didn't know. I just got a "new to me" amp from Morphsci - MisterX XP Home Amp. I owned the portable XP amp and it was at the previous meet. The Home amp version is clearly in another league and most likely only limited because of the power supply (which I will replace with a nicer laptop power supply relatively soon). I am currently listening with my iPod dock plugged into it and it is a really great combo IMO. (esp. with piano).

I think that Ray might be sold on getting a set of k400's (an AKG he seemed to like). All I can suggest to to try and get one of Fitz's that are slowly comming up.

It is now time to move to the source.
When I got back to my place, I hooked my XP to my Reciever with the RCA output and it was having channel problems on one side. For right now, I will likely be regulated to pluging the XP to the headphone out of my receiver (which doesn't sound bad, just not enough power). It seemes like it would be a good time to start looking into USB external sound cards/stations because my receiver already uses my digital out and my line-outs seem really noisy to me. There is just something that disturbs me about hearing a little bit of fuzz between notes. Really, I don't get how I can live backing to a fraternity parking lot for the last two years and get irritated by fuzz so much.

Life.

I hope that you get your older RS1's absorbine_sr! * I am gladd that most people came to the same concensus on the old/new model*

Skylab, you kids are incredibly good, cute, smart children. They were able to hold adult conversations while remaining kids and not being too serious. I am so getting my sis the m30's as a result (birthday) and then an iZ for the holidays. As a girl, of course I talked to your wife and how the progression happened. Strangely enough, I might be in that same boat as a grown adult and it is always better to be prepared!

Skylab - *I don't know if you will get this joke* You ARE Northwestern. (Your wife is also). It is rare to get to meet Alums who are a dedicated as yourselves and gives me something to look forward to. (Good seats!)

The comraderie shared amonst all present is a testament to what this hobby is all about it. As Skylab's walls said it, "It's about the Music." The B&W with Ella & Louie made my heart sink and make me want to get LP's because I have lossless recordings and they are nothing like that good.

Great People = Great Atmosphere

Fin.

Thanks for all the kid words, folks! I sure had fun. It was truly MY pleasure to be the host.

Couple other things:

> First and foremost, thanks so much to Cry Havoc for organizing the event -- I could not have done it without you Doug! And your enthusiasm for the Spurs was so infectious even my kids were watching the game!

> Sound-wise, Top Dog for me was Ray's balanced R-10's driven by his B-52. Playing Joanna Newsome, it was just heavenly. Honorable mention to Absorbine Sr's Zana Deux - I had heard it before, but it never ceases to impress. And Mike was playing Richard Thompson on it - the man has taste!

> I was a little surprised by the domination of headphones by Grado and Sennheiser at the meet. Really makes me feel like kind of an outlier, having not a single pair of either! Aura's custom Wenge-woodied 225's were REALLY pretty

> I added some captions to my pictures above.

It really was both seeing some folks again and meeting some new people. I'm really looking forward to the next meet!