01-30-16 Alum Rock Library Meet Impressions Thread

Hello all, it was absolutely fantastic seeing all who showed up. I think we all learned so much that we all just had to leave early from exhaustion. I will post later some of my impressions, and I hope you guys do the same! Please post any comments and impressions here, as well as photos... please post all your photos so we can recall the rigs better   

I enjoyed it.  Got to hear many old favorites, and some new interesting ones.

@Socratease Did you bring the H10? I didn't notice it
@SeaWo|f  Did you make it, even with that snow?

@DecentLevi Thanks for organizing the meet. I had a great time and really enjoyed trying out some new gear and meeting a few members. My takeaways in terms of gear: Great impressions hearing the LCD-3 and HD800 for the first time. Blew me away. Also tried my Fostex TH-X00 on several setups - I found the Grace Design M903 was my favorite pairing, it provided excellent separation. 
 
I spent some time shooting. Unfortunately I don't think I captured all of the rigs, but here are the keepers:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like it was a great meet.  Too bad I couldn't make it this time.  Looking forward to reading the impressions.

This meet was great .
Thanks DecentLevi so much for putting this together!
Testing some of the gear there today was definitely helpful in planning my future in the hobby. The bottlehead crack/speedball will probably be my next project.
Edit: after seeing the speedball upgrade $105 off ending tomorrow, I ate that up right away XD. I'll might make a build thread later on. yar

First of all awesome meet everyone!
 
Second, there were no bad rigs in the entire room which really surprised me. Usually someone, even myself, will have some fun piece of gear they are throwing around to get impressions.
 
Tried the O2 Element which sounded very good and I enjoyed the aesthetic changes over the older harddrive-box design.
 
Luckily someone had a CEntrance DacPort on hand when the Windows USB drivers on my laptop decided to not play nice. Whoever you are, thanks!!
 
The DacPort also sounded very good for such a small piece of gear. Drove the HE-400i easily with plenty of headroom. No noise and very clean sounding for sure.
 
Took a quick listen to Dave's Chord Mojo. Dang that thing is tiny and well-made. The controls and colorful design features took a while to get used to but boy did it sound nice. That is also a very pocket-sized amp/DAC. Thanks for bringing that and sharing with us!
 
Compared the Yggu to the Bifrost 4490 which was super fun. Thanks to you ( whoever you are ) for setting this up and running the comparison. I will be better with names next time especially if we ALL don nametags. Rest assured we both agreed that the 4490 competes well against the Yggi and neither of us thought the differences were night and day nor did we think they sounded exactly the same. Both impressed!
 
Headphones of note were definitely the Fostex TH-X00. They definitely remind me of the Denon D5000. They were definitely track picky, but boy did they sound awesome once you got the music rollin'.
 
There was a super modder in the room as well which was awesome to see as he made adjustments live. Gotta give it to that guy for having the cans and will to mod just about everything he had on the table.
 
More to come including pics tomorrow...

decentlevi said:

  @Socratease Did you bring the H10? I didn't notice it
@SeaWo|f  Did you make it, even with that snow?

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Yea, the snow must have all been south.. over my house on Mt Rose because Donner pass was completely snow free when I drove over in the morning and bone dry on my way back at night. 
 
I was the person wearing the bucket hat, black fastech racing T-shirt and blue scrub pants. 
 
Got to listen to the headphones I was wanting to hear, Thanks to the HeadAmpTeam guys it was very useful in confirming the way I was leaning for my next purchase. 
 
Edit :: also thanks to whoever gave my wife the starbucks, she had worked last night in the ICU and did not sleep well in the car one the way out.

Things I want to have from this meet:
Dharma D1000
Mojo
dynalo mk2 (multi amp)
 
Kudos to the owner of the liquid cooling computer too, I thought bringing my server rack was ridiculous.

Sure 'nuff this was a 'California meet'! 
 

1. Every other member with an HD 5xx / 6xx  - heck yeah!
2. "Hotel California" on minimum 2 rigs with at least 6 versions on one  -  representin!
3. Coffee & especially donuts - mandatory!
4. 'Beats' check at the door (well not really)
5. Women on the sidelines but don't join too far (come on ladies, this is a good hobby too?!?)
6. Very NON-Schiity gear abounds - on the real!
7. Only one Orpheus argument - politeness rules!

 
Yup folks, that's how us west-side Head-Fi'ers roll! 

I also want to say thank you very sincerely for all those who had shown good spirit with donations, food & drinks, power strips, etc. It's a real blessing to have such a helpful community - for me or anybody for that matter. 
 
I also gotta give a big thank you to @Packdemon who hand crafted this beautiful, world-class HD-650 balanced cable at my request, and @aamefford for supplying the materials. You guys were really top notch for this.  
 

 
And anybody else reading this: if you need your headphones modded in any way, or custom balanced cables made (even if the cables are non-removable), @Packdemon (Lyova in the north bay) is your guy! He was also the one with all the custom Beyerdynamic headphones

Thanks for starting this Impressions thread; I had several jobs to tend to and was unable to attend.  Any rigs with high-Z heaphones this meet?

Yeah the ATH-R70X with M903 DAC / amp combo was a hi-z can in a dimension all of it's own! While the bass wasn't upfront it was represented in a very organic way, with mids that are as lush and vivid as a first kiss as well as the highs - packing excellent yet cohesive instrument separation & detail.
 
Compared to an HD 650 the stage on the R70X seemed taller yet equally large and better detail, but the 650 won with bess definition

decentlevi said:

I also want to say thank you very sincerely for all those who had shown good spirit with donations, food & drinks, power strips, etc. It's a real blessing to have such a helpful community - for me or anybody for that matter. 

I also gotta give a big thank you to @Packdemon
 who hand crafted this beautiful, world-class HD-650 balanced cable at my request, and @aamefford
 for supplying the materials. You guys were really top notch for this.  

 



And anybody else reading this: if you need your headphones modded in any way, or custom balanced cables made (even if the cables are non-removable), @Packdemon
 (Lyova in the north bay) is your guy! He was also the one with all the custom Beyerdynamic headphones

Click to expand...

I actually live in the Sacramento area. That's not to say that I can't do mods for those of you who are in the bay, DecentLevi being an example of this.

I did, but ended up leaving it in the truck since I got there so late (after 3).