Seattle Meet 10/2/10 impressions  

What?  Nobody?  Wow. 

Guess I'll jump in, then.  First, I haven't been to a meet in a few years so it was nice to see what the current FOTMs are and get a handle on anything I might need to upgrade. 

To our vendors who continue to support Seattle Head-Fi: Sincere thanks.  I used to plan these meets a few years back before we handed the torch to Gil, and let me tell you that knowing you'll have vendors who want to be at a meet really makes us happy.  Many, many thanks.  The fact that you all were there early and set up gear for us to enjoy was just outstanding. 

KingStyles mega-system was sweet.  So articulate, clean and natural.  From the Eddie Current Balancing Act to the sand-fille audio asolation boxes for all the gear.  Wow.  Nice stuff.  Thanks for bringing along a tru reference system.  I had no idea!

I believe there were at least 10 LCD-2s there, and as this was my first time trying them out, I was skeptical.  Well, let's just say that I thought they were awfully nice with SS gear, and great with tubes.  I remember listening to some unknown Japanese female vocalist singing, and hearing the initial push of air, the initial scrape of the vocal cords, and the extended vibrato... it was just so natural. As a former singer this was so telling to me of the training that person had to go through.  Beauty!

Smeggy talked me through each particular pair of Thunderpants he had at the meet.  Geez Smeggy, those are pretty sweet.  The fact that each one had some serious high end wood cups was fantastic.  Custom headphones hand built from the great northwest!

Dan Schmalle and Queen Eileen: The Crack is amazing.  I'm sure someone would have tackled me at the door, but I really wanted to just run out the door with it and keep it for my own.  I'm sure your mega tape system had a lot to do with the great sounds I was hearing.  Never mind.  The Crack is seriously good for not serious money.  Well done!

I saw at least FOUR cameras there.  Let's try to break the Seattle meet tradition and get photos posted.  If you are unsure how, please pm me and I'll be happy to help.

As is always the case, never enough time to hear it all.  Crap.  Lots of really great raffle prizes, lots of familiar faces.  Fun as always!

I am freaking tired. The meet was the best one we had so far in years! Actually got to listen to gear running around like having my head cut off. Thanks so much to Front Panel Express for inviting us. The venue was awesome since all the MOT's had their own room. It looked like the meet wasn't busy until everyone came out for the raffle. Mrs Seamaster won the LCD-2's, it looks like a first timer won the FPE amp. Nice score. More later

yes it was a great meet, seeing old faces and meeting new ones is always fun... more people to randomly insult

It was nice to see the vendors there.. would have been moar better if I had any cash to buy some of the cool gear they had. FPE was an excellent venue and having a tour of the milling machines was fun. Major props to Popa for pulling it all together and making it a great success.

I didn't spend much time listening to gear as there were all these people around to talk to and I think a good time was had by all.

two thumbs up!

Chimera-se, it would be nice with an image host which not require login (and hence registration) to see pictures.

Hope you all had a nice time!

Thnks for all the work Big Poppa, and Thanks to Front Panel Express for the space.  Heather was a huge help in taking registrations.  It was a friendly relaxed atmosphere.  Good to see some familiar faces and some new ones.

It was a fine meet indeed and thanks to Gil (BIG POPPA) for organizing and Front Panel Express for the venue. I thought it went very well and as usual it was great to meet a new contingent of Head-Fiers. The Head-Fi force is definitely strong in Seattle - if this group keeps it up, I think they could definitely be next on the hit-list for a CanJam location after NYC '11.

Lately I've started to measure my rate of success at a meet by how much listening is done and at this meet it would've been zero if not for about 1 minute spent on an Audeze LCD-2 on the Balancing Act - which is a new record for me. One of these days I want to get down to zero and listen to absolutely nothing. Yeah so as I barely listened to anything, I have no equipment impressions to offer - my time at the meet was spent either talking to people, taking the FPE tour, hanging out in general, or taking pics. Honestly I have almost no interest in listening to gear at meets anyway - these days I almost always go to meets for the travel experience, the people, and the fun in general to be had (eating, drinking, hanging out) more than anything else. I've owned a lot of gear in the past and out of current-production items I've either heard them before at other meets, or owned them before, or currently own them, or I can pretty easily afford to buy something if I really wanted to listen.

I do have 160 meet-related pics on my camera's memory card right now, but not all will be posted, I took lots of duplicates (due to image blur, bad pics, etc). I'd say probably about 33% of them will be good enough to post later. It's going to take a while to parse them though because I literally have several hundred other pics also on the memory card from my 2 other days in the Seattle area, and I want to process those quickly too. So it may be a while until I post the pics, but I'll definitely have them up before RMAF (Oct 15-17).

Asr, talking to people is the best part of a meet!

It was a great meet with a super nice group and wonderful gear everywhere. The music servers everywhere were very cool and I think there should be some special recognition for someone having the courage to bring and set up a very nice sounding vinyl rig! Eileen and I had a great time and we really appreciated having enough space to show our gear without folks having to stand on each other's shoulders. At least you could sit in a chair while you waited for your turn to listen to a particular rig this time. In the interest of further support of the Seattle HF crew I have offered our new office on Bainbridge Is. as a future meet venue. If you are curious about what we are up to we will be having an informal open house on October 22nd, where you can see our work in progress. We have our reference system up and running in a yet to be treated room, we'll hope to have the lab and packing facilities up and running, and we might even have the start of our headphone tasting setup operational in the lobby. Tape Project recording artist Jacqui Naylor will also be there autographing CDs and tapes,and we might even get her to sing a song or two...

Dan, where can I get more information about the informal open house on Oct 22?

Lots of thanks to the folks at FPE for hosting.  It was nice having separated rooms there so there wasn't quite as much ambient noise.  Thanks to Ken for coming up from Portland with his great products.  My credit card hates you now though.  Thanks to Sachu for coming up and taking a look at the DAC and Stacker...after some tweaks I'm thinking the rig will sound better than ever.  Thanks also to Alex for coming up from Cali, it was great to see you again!  Doc B, the stuff you brought was amazing as always, and it will be a ton of fun if you host a meet in the future.  Much thanks also go to all of the people who gave items for the raffle.  I didn't win anything, but I'm positive there were some VERY happy people.  Last but not least, thanks to Gil for organizing the whole event.

It was great to meet you Asr, hope you enjoyed your time in Seattle!

I got a chance to listen to the markj's B22 and Kingstyles' rigs with my LCD-2's early on in the morning before most people were there.  It was nice being able to listen to some of the quieter music I have that are not so suited for crowded meets.  Kingstyles: if you are going to keep the music you ripped onto your computer, give me a holler and I can try to send you a list of the tracks.  Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be the first person to listen to a SE headphone out of the BA!

Thanks to everyone! This was my first meet and I was thrilled to get a chance to check out some serious gear and meet some like minded people!

Special thanks to all the vendors. And also everyone for sharing their rigs. I drove up from Portland coincidentally to see my sister in Seattle this same weekend so it worked out great for me. Since this was my first meet I wasn't sure what to expect. But next time I'll bring some equipment to participate more instead of being a spectator.

I got lots of great ideas to add to my list of DIY projects. For better or worse I'm returning to school full time so budget and time are severely curtailed but this kind of thing can really light a fire under your butt.

I've uploaded all the pics I took to a public album on Picassa here

Please feel free to add comments, especially if it's your gear in the pic.

-Dogwan