Hi. I've been out of circulation for a while, so I guess I'm bumping an old-ish thread now.
This was a great meet, which proves you don't need a mob of people to have a good meet. In fact, it was nice that everything was so mellow for hanging around and chatting. Even at that, I realized after the meet that I had missed a whole table of great gear. It was wonderful to be in a room quiet enough to hear the gear well. That doesn't happen at every meet.
Gear-wise highlights for me included the HiFiMan lossless player, which was absolutely eccellent on my IEMs, less so on a pair of ESW-9s, but then again I'm not familiar with the ESW-9s, so it could be that they didn't float my boat as opposed to the HiFiMan not driving them well.
The HE-5LEs sounded great on Ron's WA6. The rising treble of the pair of HE-5 that Miguel had for a while was nowhere to be heard and the WA6 was driving them with aplomb, which my 6SE had not done with the original 5s. The shell of the 5LEs is not as beautiful as the wooden one on the 5, but the 5 LEs are still a very attractive headphone.
Plaidplatypus had an very interesting set of Stax Sigmas, modified with 404LE drivers (by spritzer, IIRC) that were impressive, as was Miguels' old school tuner, driving both 'stats and K-1000s.
The most fun had with a piece of gear had to be the tiny, peculiar-looking naked amp that Ron brought, an Audi Bravo, or Bravo Audi, I couldn't quite tell which. Somebody got the idea of seeing if it would drive K-1000s (which proves you don't need to drink to have a good time if nothing else ;-) Thing is, at moderate levels it sounded good with the K-100s! Up to the point where I thought I heard a little clipping, at which point I backed the volume down quick-ish. So then I pulled out my HD-650s and tried them on the little rascal. They sounded great. There was a major synergy. My HD-650s (which have Moon Audio Silver Dragons cables) and this little amp, with whatever tube this particular one had, on this particular day, etc, etc, sounded as good as I've heard 650s sound. Astounding. Then I tired my K-701s. K-701s aren't the most drivable phones on the planet to say the least, but this little thing did really well with them. I think they sound better on my Woo, which only costs 32 times as much, but for darn sure not 32 times better. They were really enjoyable. You've got to be realistic. Money and over the top parts and construction do buy performance and enduring quality and whatnot, but this little gizmo shakes your frame or reference. By they way, Ron's copy wasn't naked because he had taken it out of its case, it just is naked. It sort of has a case, in the way that Misty May Treanor sort of has a volleyball uniform. It's just the circuit board, with two little pieces of plexiglas on standoffs, one above and one below the board. There are no sides at all. The jacks are all board-mounted and are more or less in the breeze. It's a good thing its rail voltage is way less than Ms Treanor's. Most peculiar indeed. But mostly - fun, which is the idea and and what we had a lot of at this meet.
