Northern NJ July 25th Meet Impressions and such  

Thanks a lot guys for organizing such an amazing meet. It was nice to meet you all and learn so much more in person. You all have a great collection of cans and equipment. Very professionally setup was a great opportunity to hear all the different gear out there. Thanks once again for organizing.

Northern NJ July 25th Meet Impressions and such

I just got back to PA from the meet. One trip up the steps down, 5 or 6 to go. If I never post again you can figure a heart attack from carrying all my equipment up to the 2nd floor did me in.

Thanks to Larry. It was a great low key event. I apologize for bailing on dinner but the prospect of unloading after midnight was more than I could handle.

The Highlight for me was that the HD-800 are nowhere near as good as some would have you believe, at least for me they aren't. I listened to them Balanced on three different amps (M3, B52 and Phoenix). The only amp that made them sound good was the B52. With the M3 they were OK and with my Phoenix they weren't even OK. With the Phoenix they sounded sort of un-dynamic. I'm sort of glad, it saves my wallet.

Now for a couple of trips carrying equipment back up the steps.

Wish me luck

Took me 9 hours to get home from Maryland. Wouldn't have gotten there before 5 p.m.

The GSP was closed for a couple of hours around exit 51 due to a 10 vehicle crash, including an AC Bus and a Hummer limo. People were out of their cars, on the median grass with blankets and chairs and lunch and beers. Kids were playing ball and frisbees. It looked like a scene from "The Day The Earth Stood Still".
Then there was the torrential flash floods around exit 90, and the construction (it appears that they are ripping down thousands of trees to add a third lane all the way from Atlantic City). Then there was the 2 hour Belt Pkwy gauntlet from the Verazanno to The Cross Island Pkwy.
It wasn't in the cards for me to be able to make it. If I had known, I never would have gotten up at 6 a.m. to leave to go to the meet. I could have been on the beach until my Priority Club 3 p.m. checkout privilege.

Can you tell how bummed I am? Hope you guys had a blast. My brain hurts.

When doesn't it?

We missed you mountain biker!

And -- lets give thanks to John too, and everyone who helped carry, pay, etc.

Yikes had some fantastic sounding gear; also featuring amazing sound were the new (to me) amps from Woo. I leave precise descriptions to others.

Fang's (Head-Direct) new pocket device was very neat, as was the EF-2, and his prototype headphone (I could tell you more about the HP but then I would have to kill you).

John managed to destroy seven or eight EF-1's with his bogus 12AU7, but Fang smiled thru it all. I do believe Fang has taken out an old-fashioned contract on John, this being New Jersey and all, so we expect to read John's obit soon.

I think that left my EF-1 as the only working unit, and we did an RCA cleartop v grey-plate shoot-out, with cleartop clearly (couldn't help the pun) winning. Benaiir brought like 50 vintage 12AU7's to the meet, and we tested to find the best for the comparison (John and I bought the finest from him, too bad for the rest of you, Benaiir left a rich young man).

Nikongod and ListenstoTubes gave us lessons in tube testing -- wonderful and educational to the max! Most enjoyable. TubeUniverse/World/Planet/City/Village will never fool me again! Nikongod also played bank at dinner, a thankless job (but I did see him light a cigar with a $20 bill afterwards).

*** IT IS OFFICIAL *** the informal steering committee met in the parking lot at 10 p.m. and voted: The NJ Meet -- next year is 3rd annual -- is now ALWAYS the last Saturday in July, at the East Hanover Ramada, with dinner after at the Macaroni Grill (until the health authorities or the mob closes one or the other venue).

My day went from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., and I loved every minute of it. Thank you NJ Head-Fi!

great job Larry organizing the meet. it was low key but i had a great time and the gear was quality. don't have many impressions, but i will post something tomorrow.

Are you the "brain surgeon"?

If you'd like I can make it stop hurting?

Believe it or not, I'm starting the last trip from the car. 7 freaking trips up and down. I've been up since 4 am yesterday.

Next meet, I'm going to spend the night at the hotel. It'll divide up the labor and driving, and I'll be able to hang out and have dinner. It's only money.

Pictures and impressions anyone?

Great meet! It was my first time and it definitely didn't disappoint. I will look forward to it again next year. Thanks to everyone for sharing their wonderful headphone rigs. They were all a testament to how much you guys enjoy your music.

Thanks for the great opportunity. If I manage to get my own rig together, I'll be back next year.

Hey, man, we tested that tube. There's nothing wrong with it, in fact, it's the best tube I have besides my cleartop out of the 6 that I brought. The problem is that the pins were bent, which we now fixed in Neal's pin straightener. Lesson learned: bent pins can ruin a socket. The death toll is actually only three EF1's. Major, major props to Fang, who not only puts up with me but brought some really awesome prototypes for us to try out.

Wow, we had an ever better showing than last year with even more great equipment than before! I must say, I never heard a rig at this meet that I didn't like!

I'll post full impressions later, but this is something that a few of us talked about afterwards... we're locking July 24th, 2010 in as our date for next year. Craig told me last year that I should lock in this year's date, but I told him that I wanted to see what the turnout would be. Turns out, I should have taken his advice, because this was the best date two years in a row now!

Also, people often ask me, "did you organize this meet?". The important thing to note here is that nobody organized the meet! Head-Fi'ers are amazing in that regard. I made a thread to drum up people, Larry found a hotel so we could actually meet somewhere (PROPS TO LARRY!!!), but nothing was organized. We showed up, we set up, we listened, we eargasm'd, and then we ate too much Italian food.

It was a blast!

I merged posts that were still being posted in the original thread. Message left to post here.

My Impressions

My rig was so worthless I didn't even bother setting it up, plus I was so excited (That's why I was a little jumpy/nervous... Or I just felt that way).

Anyways, I'm glad I went because now I know I don't like the can I was looking at the most: The D7000. Why? It's not nearly as clear or bassy as I expected. Lets put it this way: I enjoyed the HD800/Stax MUCH more. So what's next on the list for me? The D5000. I'm not sure who's they were, but they were sitting all the way in the back by a huge HP laptop. I fired them up to "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed, and I couldn't believe how nice they sounded, even with the recording being at 192kbps. I couldn't believe how much I liked these compared to the D7000, so I went back to Yikes's rig and tried them again (Thanks Yikes for saving me ~$600). Another cool thing I noticed is that I don't like the L3000's. Maybe they weren't amped enough, but they just didn't have any special qualities to them.

On vcoheda's rig, there was an HD800, and an HD650. There was another guy listening (Dunno his username) and I sat there with my load of CD's waiting. Lets put it this way: I'm an impatient person. He sat there listening to his recording (Which leaked through the HD800's and I could already tell how clear they were. So looking at the CDP (It was a pretty nice one, once again, dunno the name), the track was running for 2mins and 30 secs, but it felt like a heck of a lot longer. He took them off and passed them over to (His son?), who seemed to be on his way to another rig. Then the track ran another 2mins. He took off the cans and passed them over to vcoheda. I was still a bit p.o'd but it's his rig, right? He took em off after about 30secs and I asked the guy if I could take a listen to his recording, as I could tell it's much better than I can get, plus they were discussing the recording while the (Son?) was listening. I put them on, and it was worth the wait. Let me add that this wasn't my kind of music. It was like western mixed with a spanish flavor to it. I didn't like the song really, but every time there was a pluck on the guitar, I could feel it. I closed my eyes and if I didn't know any better, I was there. I could hear every sound. I took it off the HD800's, since the guy would probably want his disk back and left. That was probably the best sound I've ever heard/will hear in my life.

For now I'm hungry, so I'm gonna grab some breakfast. More impressions to be added when I get the time.