Portland / Stumptown Impressions, 27th Feb 2011

Thanks much sachu for being brave enough to host a meet - I know from experience it's trying, especially worrying about cleanup. I may have only been there for half of it, and didn't listen to much, but it was certainly cool to see so many new faces. Cavalli's new amp is a serious powerhouse, a beautiful hybrid - definitely top tier. The LCD2's still sound great, though I was more enticed by the HE6 this time around, which paired really nicely with the hybrids for a warm but highly detailed sound.

Classic head-fi meet conundrum - that's why he's testing out the closed cans:

Team Cavalli table:

Ghetto faceplates and all:

And then my camera battery died

I had a great time and would like to thank Sachu for a wonderful meet. The LCD-2's out of the Liquid Fire was really something special and the 404's out of the exstata did NOTHING to rid me of my desire for an stax setup! 

I must say I had a great time and big thanks to Sachu for organizing this event. It was great to meet people who have at least as much interest in headphones and associated equipment as I do, and likely more. As the pictures show there were several setups and headphones to listen to and I thought they all sounded pretty good. Each set had pluses and minuses but none of them had anything outright objectionable, at least to my ears. Unfortunately I had to leave a little early and didn't get to listen to the later arrivals but of the ones I did hear I think the Audeze LCD-2's were my favourite.

My personal highlight of the meet was the Magnapan Magnaplanar 1.6 speakers. Those are the best sounding home speakers I've ever heard. Outstanding clarity, surprising bass with no subwoofer needed. Looking forward to the next one. 

Thanks for hosting, sachu!  Great times.  The Maggies with the Triad Audio preamp sounded amazing!

Wow, 400 miles and lots of smiles,  you guys in the N part of my state put on a meet that was truly great!

What I did not expect to find, Thank you Sachu for being so kind, to introduce me to the new Portland sound,

so many bands, it's quite profound!

micro brew & snacks were good too.       ..  I"d like to do this fulltime?  hmm.

This was a great first time meet for me, thanks again to sachu for hosting.

There was a wide array of headphones and it was awesome to be able to try them out, including a number I had been wanting to get a chance to listen to. While I liked everything there were a few that stood out for me.

My favorites were the Thunderpants. They just did everything right to my preferences. Other ones I especially liked were the Hifiman HE-6 and the Denon AH-D7000. I was amazed at the variety of models people brought out.

I didn't listen to as many different amplifiers, but did try out a few. The one that was especially impressive to me was the Cavalli Audio Liquid Fire amp.

It was treat to be able to hear Maggies again, they remain one of my favorite speaker lines, and the pairing with the Plinus amplification was excellent.

Thanks again to everyone who took the trouble to bring out all of your great equipment to share with the rest of us.

Looks like it was a blast!  Wow those Magnepans look like fun.  I'm scared of what would happen if I find myself in a large enough place or buy a house...I'd be able to start working more on my home theater system.

Next stop for the Liquid Fire prototype: my apartment...er....I mean the Seattle meet!

I just ordered a pair to replace my Beyerdynamics for both work and travel - can't wait to get them.

I have only owned planars (full range and hybrids) since the mid-80s so I guess it is time to switch over for headphones too.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alarickc 

How could forget the Thunderpants?! Truly an amazing headphone, it certainly shows how a great driver can be ruined by a bad housing, and how an amazing housing can resurect it! If I can get the money, they would my first choice for a portable set-up!

Sachu,

I fully agree with the posts.  It was a nice meet and I fear I left without helping to pay for the cost of the room use.  I'll own up to it this Saturday at the Bottlehead meet.

While I had my lust for the Liquid Fire somewhat quenched by a need for a higher gain amplifier, I do agree it is quite a nice sounding and very lovely looking piece of work. I just did not have enough time to play different songs with it to get a sense of what it does for my preferences in music and headphone sound...I keep hoping for the one all and be all amplifier to handle both the genre as well as the sound...my only hindrance is that I need POWA...so it keeps me from the really nice sounding designs ya alls get the lux to hear.  Maybe if I wasn't as tired as I was that day, i might have cottoned more to it..

After I left...I headed to see an old friend in Vancouver for dinner on the way home.  Thank god I did.  My transmission died and went to metal melt heaven.  My wife had to drive down to get me yesterday and we sent it to a transmission shop down there.  Whatever plans I then held for upgrades went down the tubes (no pun intended)...such is life.  

I liked the HE-6 with the Liquid Fire..I was quite surprised in fact...it had the midrange I love in my ATH AD2000.  I was equally pleased with the HD650 which I had been sidestepping a serious listen to because I have the HD555 and didn't expect too much of a jump....but it tickled my fancy enough to get me to thinking of swapping that one into my growing stable....

I was also happy to make the acquaintance of the attendees.  I look forward to future opportunities.  I did not get names so, I can't particularly say who I spoke to was helpful but the conversation with Alarickc about the higher gain E80CC tube got me to thinking of some lower cost strategies to get some midrange gain into some of the better amp designs I can work towards....so thanks for that tip.

Looking forward to seeing ya all Saturday at Doc B's.

Another great meet. Thanks for sharing the pics all.

@Everybody: Very nice to see some familiar faces, and meet some new ones!

@Remitrom: Your amp did quite nicely with the 5-6 different IEMs I tried on it.

@Dev: Seems that we just missed each other. But our LCD-2 vs HE-6 impressions are very much on the same page.

@Sachu: Thanks for getting it all going! But *not* for showing off your home setup. It's got me seriously jonesing to place an order to try out the "baby maggies" (like the MC1).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew H 
@Dev: Seems that we just missed each other. But our LCD-2 vs HE-6 impressions are very much on the same page.

I noticed! Bummer, need to meet up next time.