It was great to finally go to another MA/NE head-fi meet. I think it's been at least 2 years since a full scale one. Great work Emooze! It was a huge success. The location was super easy to get to (no Boston traffic for me), and the location itself was very nice. The staff there did everything to make it as nice as possible. Thanks Emooze!
Now onto some gear.
Nate's unique build of Justin's
Blue Hawaii: This was the smoothest, most laid back, Omega 2 setup I have heard to date. I still think I'm a SS amp guy though, even for the O2.
Speaking of the
O2, wow! These are on my wishlist. I seriously need to compare them side by side with my HE60. I'm not sure which I will prefer, but I think I've made up my mind to keep the HE60 until I've at least compared the 2 for a good while. I heard them out of the Stax tube amp and the Woo Audio WES. Both sounded quite nice. Very cool!
You know, I laugh at this, but I've spent so much money upgrading components, and then I tried a
Mapletree Ear + Grado SR325 setup today and was very impressed with the instrumental songs it was playing. You sure can have great sound without spending an arm and a leg!
I was happy to hear the
AT M50. They do have a mid bass bump which makes them sound more like a movie theater. Interesting little things!
I also tried some JVC's, which I'm told sell for ~40$us. Very nice for the price. 40$ headphones shouldn't have that much soundstage, but they sure did.
I wasn't blown away by the
Beyer T1. They seemed like a more refined DT880, but they didn't strike me as very involving from the short listening I did. Thankfully though, they didn't have sibilance like the HD800's have for me.
The
HE-5 are still not my cup of tea. There is a peak in the upper mids that makes vocals sibilant for me (more so than the HD800).
Lots of various
Stax 404's. They sounded very nice. A full bodied mid range, though not as expansive as some of their more expensive brethren.
Also tried the
Take-T ear speakers. I didn't like these.
My HD800. I wasn't too crazy about these. There certainly is a sibilance to the vocals that I just can't get past. I'm also getting a little bored with the 'semi-speaker' presentation. If I'm listening to headphones, I want them to sound like headphones.
My HE60. Someone was playing some pink floyd, and when that money song came on the ripping of the paper totally freaked me out. It sounded like it was coming from 10 feet away, but as pinpoint as could be. SO COOL! I'll have to listen to this when I set them back up.
Certainly great setups at this meet, and what a wide variety.
I was shocked at the amount of people who brought computers this time. Back 3 years or so ago I would have been one of just a very few to bring a computer, and now at least half the setups were computer based. Computer as source sure has caught on!
Great times.
Alas, my workload caught up with me, and my sleep schedule was completely off
