Orange County Meet Impressions: 1/30/2010 - Page 3

what a mind blowing experience this was, im on my way to work again, but wow!

Has somebody had the chance to try the RSA Protector with the JH13s ?

Darn! that was an amazing collection of stuff you all had to play with. I would have had a hard time deciding where to start. Hope you all had a great time.

I think it goes without saying that Gaurav was a most gracious host. I could not thank him enough for such a smooth, enjoyable meet.

Like many others, I did barely any listening at this meet. The conversations with others proved to be the most rewarding experience of the meet. Loved both speaker setups that were upstairs, and those were definately the highlight gearwise, at the meet for me. I brought some changes to the O2 setup that Milos and I combined to create. Compared to the last meet, I think it gathered much better reaction this time. Previously many were saying that the O2 was just such a "pleasant" and "smooth" listen, but it just "didn't rock." This time around, it seemed to gather much better reactions. No comments on the O2 being dark or sluggish, which is a great thing. Mission accomplished, although unfortuantely after hearing the O2 on the 717 and on his own transformer setup, Jon might have a rather expensive Stax bug nipping at his wallet. As for me, I was very suprised with the normal bias Sigmas. Such wonderful midrange, and natural presentation. I really think i'm going to pick up one to use with my upcoming BH which will have one normal bias output, but that is if I can find one.

I hope everyone had just as much fun as I did and just wanted to thank Gaurav and his family again for such patience and welcome for quite a large group of people in their home. Fantastic meet!

Thanks to Gaurav for hosting the meet and providing snacks, as it was a good deal of work. It was of course fun to see everyone again and hear some great equipment. Hopefully, my rig will be more functional in the future, as I'll just run my Oppo as a transport versus my glitchy laptop.

I was looking forward to hearing the Orpheus and R10 prior to this meet, and I now understand why people appreciate them, although they're both too colored for my taste. I did some direct comparisons of the Jades to the HE90's at Ray's table through his G08->A10 rig and, to be honest, I might prefer the Jades, although the two were very similar.

I had also been attracted to the O2 Mk 1's at the last meet, so I took another listen and again was very impressed, even through supposedly mediocre amplification (717). Comparing them to Jon's He Audio 1.2b's (apparently almost identical to the Jades), the O2's had more bass quantity, slam, extension, and control, which ended the comparison pretty quickly for me. Deadneddz happened to have The Crystal Method's Tweekend sitting around, and the O2 seemed to "rock" perfectly fine, resolving any latent concerns I had on that regard. They also came across as pretty much neutral, just on the dark side of neutral - if you consider the HD800 neutral, they're dark, but if you consider the HD800 bright or cold, they're neutral. I may make the shift to 'stats in the next year or so.

Getting back to Ray's table, the Protector was pretty impressive - plenty of power to drive everything. I couldn't find any flaws driving the HD800's, although I didn't make any detailed comparisons to anything else. With my JH13's, the soundstage seemed to open up noticeably, and the sound was very clean and transparent to my ears. Moonboy mentioned that he noticed the difference even more when he compared the SE and balanced outputs, but I didn't get a chance to do that and I'll let him speak for himself.

The pairing of JH13 with the Protector was ridiculous. I first tried out the Protector connected to Ray's Meridian CD player and I thought it sounded really nice but I didn't give it much thought until I pulled out my iTouch and compared. When I listened to the same tracks, I literally thought that either my iTouch or my JH13 broke. The difference IMO was that big. I then thought to myself, maybe it had something to do with the source. So I went back to using the Protector (this time SE) connected to the Meridian and I was still getting the tiny images that I got from the Protector (in contrast to the JH13 being driven balanced). Then I went back to driving the JH13 balanced and these were the things that jumped out at me:

There was a very noticeable increase in bass. Soundstage was pushed forward a bit. Images are now much bigger and I get a lot of that out-of-head experience that IEMs lack (IMO). Soundstage is now mostly all around my head. The increase in ambiance retrieval, depth, and width was also noticeable.

Needless to say, I was very impressed by the Protector driving the JH13 via balanced out (I didn't think much of the Protector's SE out in contrast to the balanced one). If people think that the improvements gained by driving the HD650 balanced is a lot, well, THINK AGAIN.

As for the K1000 amp that Don designed, I loved it. It looks very nice already even though it's still in its prototype stage. Comparing his K1000 amp and my Stingray side by side, I thought his amp has a healthy increase in imaging, clarity, and overall naturalness. But I will probably need to spend some time with his amp at home in order for me to give a more detailed comparison. (You hearing this Don? )

Don also put in a flip switch on his amp so we can to either drive the K1000 SE or balanced and none of us knew which one is which. When I tried it, I had a very hard time telling any difference between the two modes. The only very very slight difference that I heard was that soundstage was pushed forward a tiny tiny bit on one of the modes (balanced) which me, Phil, and John all agreed on (and we never discussed it with each other).

No, I didn't think the soundstage was pushed forward on the balanced mode. I thought the vocals were the tiniest bit more coherent and further away. The SE mode was slightly more centered but more diffuse.

Don didn't tell us which position was balanced or which was SE drive. We had to decide first and only later he told us. I picked the correct mode.

Thats really great about the Protector, thanks for the impressions did you use the protector with your iTouch to the protector with a line out?

Not balanced mode as I would have to keep switching cable.

So you didnt use it balanced out of the iTouch at all? thats a bummer, ill be using it primarily out of my classic with a line out.

It definitely sounds better the better your source is, but that goes for any amp. I didn't spend much time listening to it with Ray's iPhone, so I can't really comment on that. The better your portable source sounds with your current amp, the better it will sound with the Protector.

I guess i need to qualify that, when portable ill be using it with the classic, or when at work. I guess whenever im at home ill be using it with the Audio GD DAC19Mk3 so im sure that will make it sound even better.

Yep!

Lots of potential recruits to the Stax Mafia here

Please keep us posted on that one!