3rd Annual Austin, Texas Spring Meet - March 2nd, 2013 - Page 4  

February 9th and 16th would work well for me if we need to move it up. Any luck finding a place? If we need to rent a place we can charge a small cover or raffle off a piece of gear donated, etc.

SxSW (all three parts) runs from March 8 through 17. My guess is that hotel/motels will be available on the 2nd-ish.

 

The event I cited was for the music production volunteers, almost all of us are local--or staying with friends.

That makes it seem like the 2nd should still be in play. Also, I'm one who'll be coming in from out of town (Fort Worth) but have plenty of friends and/or family I can stay with if I have to. The only thing I'd like to avoid is the full-blown SxSW traffic and whatnot.

All of Feb is bad for me personally.  The 2nd still sounds like our best bet.  If we can confirm this date, I will start a search for places.  To Maxvla's point, I think we are getting big enough to go to a paid venue this year.  Hopefully we can get some sponsors to offset some of the cost and bring down any entry donations to a minimum.

Definitely drink it soon! No decisions on a serious headphone rig yet and competing expenses (house). You have set the bar pretty high by exposing us to the Cavalli plus Stax combo ;-) We'll look into driving our trusty AKG 701s better than the built-in amps in our Apogee boxes (FW Duets, MiniMe and MiniDAC). Next we'll start looking at putting together a serious headphone rig with a laptop as a source. We'll probably try to decide on the hp first and work our way backward from there. I think the meet could be very helpful!

Here's a site for library reservations. It seems most of the Austin libraries have room(s) available that can handle 40-50 people in a normal 'meeting' type event, which for us with gear and stuff would be more like 20-30. It might be worth your while to take a trip driving to libraries around town one day to see what the rooms look like.

http://library.austintexas.gov/reservations/month/all?month=2013-01

At the bottom you can select individual libraries to see their specific schedule easier. Some libraries are already booked for March 2nd.

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There's also the Ronald McDonald House room that is free. It would be nice to collect at least a small cover to use as a donation if we chose this location.

http://www.rmhc-austin.org/community-room

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The Goodwill place looks great. Here's the info and a video tour of the room:

http://www.austingoodwill.org/ems/contact.html

http://www.austingoodwill.org/community/virtual_tour/conference_rooms.html

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Then there's also the Austin Community Foundation:

http://austincommunityfoundation.org/

Not sure what their rooms look like or what amenities are available.

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The Mitte Carriage House has a room that might be big enough, though it does look a little on the smallish side. It's $20 an hour.

http://www.greenlights.org/resources/nonprofit-meeting-space/mitte-carriage-house
Edited by Maxvla - 11/26/12 at 12:54am

Love the library suggestion, Maxvla.  Thanks.

I've never been to any kind of Head-Fi meet, but reading about them, it seems that the major benefit of attending is, of course, social in nature.  

 

But here's a question to which the answer is probably obvious to those who have actually been to meets:  Is it difficult to evaluate gear amidst all the ambient noise in a conference hall?  

 

I would think that chains terminated with open headphones would be especially difficult to evaluate...

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

Yes--that was a challenge even last year where we had the Austin meet in a home that was 100% (or nearly so) available to us thanks to Morbid Toaster.

At the Dallas meets, an adjoining conference room (separate from the main area) is available for quiet listening. We didn't use it last time because we managed to audition everything in the main room without too much fuss. But as the meets get larger I expect the "quiet room" might eventually come in handy.

 

Perhaps some of the venues in Austin have adjoining rooms? Beyond 15-ish people it gets noisy fairly quickly.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.  I suppose it's unavoidable - the noise, that is.

 

I ask, because I see myself falling into the mode of buy-it-and-resell-it, just for the opportunity to listen to and thoroughly evaluate gear I've never heard before.  I know a lot of Head-Fi members do buy and resell  almost routinely, as the best way to examine gear thoroughly, as they carve their own path to audio nirvana.    I've even bought and returned gear on retailer's 15-day guarantees, some with restocking charges as high as 15%, some without, but I hate doing that.  It just feels wrong.

 

And buying new gear that doesn't have a money-back guarantee, then reselling it, gets expensive real fast - like renting each item for hundreds of dollars - but at least you can keep it as long as you like and run it at home, on your equipment, instead of listening to someone else's headphones you're considering on their amp and their DAC with their music.  Then, of course, there's the option of buying used gear and reselling it, if you don't like it as much as something else in your inventory - but there are some pitfalls associated with that, too.  It is, however, the most affordable option, other than borrowing from gracious friends, which itself can suffer hiccups.  (I've recently exited one week of borrowing a Final Audio Design PF VIII -and- a Final Audio Design dc-1601 - $2200 worth of gear, without incident - what a relief it was to de-possess them!)

 

So... Austin, here I come!  It is what it is - but I'll probably be making more noise than listening to gear!  

 

Mike

I think Lextek still holds the record for evaluative buy/sell. He initially bought my MG Head OTL back in 2002, sold it, and then re-bought it at least five more times! Obsessiveness may be classified as a disorder, but I can't argue that it also delivers good results.

LOL!   Thanks for telling that story - it makes me feel better about having sold my DACport LX to a friend at work, only to buy myself a new one just three weeks later!  

 

But at least I can say that's the only time I've ever re-purchased an item (so far...)

 

Will anyone be bringing an Audeze LCD-2 or 3?