Meet Impressions, Part III (last impression post, I promise!)
Another objective I had was to hear my Stax Lambda Pros with some of the high end amps. I grabbed my headphones and headed to the other room hoping to plug my headphones into the Blue Hawaii. I can tell you that the combo did not disappoint.
This is about as happy as I get:
Even Mr. Orpheus enjoyed getting reunited with the Lamda Pros out of the Blue Hawaii.
Of course there was something else in the room that I needed to hear. The Menace. Honestly, this thing is a behemoth. I wanted to take some photos of it but with my 50mm Macro lens (100mm equivalent with the 4/3 system) I couldn't get the whole thing in.
Here's a shot of the business end of the amp.
The power supply for this thing is just as big, if not bigger, and certainly much heavier. Nate had his woodied HF-1s plugged into it and I was shocked. I have a stock pair of HF-1s (which I should have tried out of the Menace but there just wasn't enough time) and I've always considered them a decent pair of headphones for $200. They aren't perfect but don't suffer from the "Grato" sound as much as say the SR225, which is a comparably priced model. I've never thought they competed with the higher end Grados. With the Menace however, my impression of them has changed. They apparently scale very well and the shortcomings I was hearing were from my system, or to be kind a lack of synergy with my system, and not necessarily a fault of the headphones.
The Menace grabbed the bass on the HF-1 and body slammed it, in a good way, of course. The mids were as smooth as on the GS1000 I heard with the WA6SE. The authority of the Menace was an excellent match for the HF-1s. I don't think it has much to do with the mod on n_maher's headphones since the driver, and I think the cabling, are stock. The only difference is wood vs. plastic cups.
I also had a chance to listen to Kerry's amp with the Lambda Pros again. I first heard his amp at the last meet and was very impressed. The Blue Hawaii sounds great, no question, but this amp really synergizes well and makes me think that an upgrade from the SRM-1/MKII may be in order. I really like my Lambda Pros better than my dynamic headphones most of the time so upgrading that setup may be the way to go. Kerry said his amp is similar to the Woo GES. Unfortunately, Woo did not have one on hand so I couldn't compare.
Although I wanted to listen more to some of the rigs in room 2 it was silent auction time. Yikes was greatly missed at the meet and my condolencese to him and his family. SiBurning stepped up and ran the "not so silent" part of the silent auction.
Many thanks to everyone who donated and bid. Your contributions make these meets possible so keep up the good work!
When the dust settled I decided to spend a little time with my own rig. Triad Audio had generously sent a LISA III amp to the fall meet but right after the meet I gave it to ghostmusic for review. When he arrived at the meet I put it in my rig but never really gave it a listen as I was bouncing around. I decided I should go back and hear my "reference" system again after hearing all the other great gear.
My rig consisted of the Ack dAck 2.0 as a source with modded Sony DVD player as the transport (upgraded clock and power supply) feeding into the Stax SRM 1/MKII. When I first arrived I looped that out to the Little Dot MKIII. I found that the Denons sounded a bit mushy from the Little Dot compared to some of the other rigs, like the Wavelength/Rudistor combo, Amphora or WA6SE. Still not too bad though.
Since I already had the LD looping out from the Stax amp, I decided to try using the analog outs of my Sony DVD player for the LISA III. Since the output was also modded and upgraded I figured it wouldn't be too bad. However, I was wrong. I discovered that the LISA III is very source dependent. From the DVD player the Denons had uncontrolled boomy bass and the Sonys were strident and sibilant, practically unlistenable.
I changed it so the LISA III was being fed by the Ack dAck from the loop out of the Stax amp. This was much better. The Denons were now smooth and enjoyable throughout the frequency range, with a modest soundstage but with excellent imaging. The Sonys were still tipped toward the highs but now were much more enjoyable and were excellent at detail retrieval. What I actually discovered when I got home and set up my rig again is that the Sonys sound best if I loop out from the Stax amp to the Little Dot and use the preamp out from the LD to the LISA III. This may be my (short term?) solution for the SA5000. More time is needed with this and tube rolling may come into play.
As the meet was starting to wind down, I had to hustle to get in some things I originally planned to hear. Next up was the Compact Tube Hybrid amp, built by cfcubed (Chris). The room was already starting to get broken down by the time I made it over to Chris and he had packed up his rig. He graciously offered to hook it back up for me though. Of course, this wasn’t too difficult since the amp is so small and was fed by an iPod.
This little amp is truly remarkable. It has a 6.3/12.6V switchable heater supply so there are many tube rolling possibilities, and has fully discrete output buffers. The closest commercial offering right now to this amp would probably be the EF-1, but this amp offers a greater tube selection. My only nit-pick with this amp was that it had a 1/8” headphone plug. I didn’t have an adaptor on me so I wasn’t able to listen to either of my headphones.
However Chris had some recabled Beyerdynamic DT880 and Denon D2000. The D2000 were close enough to my headphones for me to think this would be a very good match for the MD5000 DE, and with plenty of tube rolling options there may even be a way to warm it up for the SA5000.
For those interested in building or finding out more about this amp check this thread:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f6/ver...id-amp-398839/
My final listening experience of the afternoon was to listen to moodysteve’s ß22. He had promised me that there was no headphone he had ever heard that the amp couldn’t handle, so I took him up on that challenge and brought along the SA5000.
The build quality of this amp is fantastic. Steve really did a wonderful job.
But how does it sound? Well, I think Steve is right. The Sony’s may have sounded the best I heard them all day. It’s probably a toss up between this amp and the WA2 for which one played nicest with the SA5000. I could definitely listen to the Sonys through this amp for an extended period.
With the MD5000 DE however, it was even better. There was a musical smoothness to the sound but the details were not glossed over. The headphones almost disappeared and the music just washed over me. Believe it or not it reminded me of the Orpheus in its lush smoothness.
Great job Steve. Thanks for sharing, and I hope to hear this amp again at the next meet.
As usual, it was a fantastic meet. Many thanks to immtbiker for organizing this and SiBurning for helping out on the website and auction. Kudos to all the wonderful vendors that show up at our little meets. They really get the sense of community that these meets foster and their willingness to participate really says a lot about their character. They also have a lot of great products, so thank you very much.
Of course, many thanks to all those who attended from far and near. As the saying goes “the members make the meets”. So keep on making it, and I hope to see everyone at the fall shenanigans.
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