[yage]

After reading the replies, it looks like there's a quorum for Matchbox. So far, here's the headcount for reservation purposes:
 
@Billheiser
@kendavis + friend
@Psalmanazar
@sheldaze
@ScottFW
@yage
 
If anybody else wants to join us (don't have to be going to the show), please reply to the thread or PM me tonight. I'll make the reservation tomorrow morning for 12:30 p.m.
 
 
Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow!

 

[ScottFW]

@yage Add me to the lunch list please.
 
Quote:

  Ooh, raising the stakes!

Ray's The Steaks is great, but Arlington is a little too far for a CAF lunch.

 

[yage]

Done!

 

[yage]

Alright guys - I went ahead and made the reservation tonight so we're all set.

 

[kendavis]

  Alright guys - I went ahead and made the reservation tonight so we're all set.

Thank you, @yage. What time is the reservation for? Is the plan still to meet at the hotel at noon or are folks meeting at the restaurant?
 
Also, it turns out that my friend won't be joining us.

 

[yage]

I plan on waiting for everyone at noon by the registration tables. The reservation is for 1230.

 

[markm1]

I hope to see some of you guys there. I wasn't sure what my ETA would be, and didn't want to commit to a reservation. Enjoy lunch. I'm coming late morning-cheers!

 

[Billheiser]

I won't get there in time; y'all enjoy lunch.

 

[Billheiser]

I went this afternoon, just for a couple of hours.  Unbelievably, I did not win the $12,000 system in the raffle.  
 
Enjoyed the handful of rooms I went to.  I still don't get the appeal of the giant folded horn speakers, which look like the boxes my washer and dryer came in.  I enjoyed the music and the Caravelle speakers in the "Star Sound" room.  I had never heard of the company before; the sound was excellent.  
I figured the room with expensive Gershman Acoustics speakers ("Grande Avant Garde", such a modest name) and VAC amplifiers would be impressive, but the volume was a bit too high and made the speakers sound a little harsh.  Darn shame.  
The KEF Chrome Gargantuans (edit:  they are called the Muons) sounded perfect in every way.  But for the price ($200,000), I guess they were mediocre.
Very nice sound in the rooms with Daedulus speakers, and with Spendors.  
Passed by several rooms with amazing gear but no music playing - bye bye.
 
Headphone related content:  I listened to HE-1K with stock vs. Danacables.  Dang, I did detect a small improvement.  Not enough to buy $850 cable, though.
 
Y'all like the show?

 

[sheldaze]

I enjoyed the show, quite immensely!
 
But I also recalled, at the same time, why I like speakers, and why I dislike shopping for speakers or going to speaker shows. Was it the amplifier? Or was it the DAC? Or was it one of those fancy new hard drive servers and optimized digital source? Or was it the speaker (a detractor)? Or was it the room (also a detractor)? All these questions went through my head when I was listening to a wonderful DAC presentation in one of rooms - lower level, far side, not the side underneath the hotel entrance. I ultimately decided it was probably a good value, according to the rules of buying stuff at markup prices at a dealer. But Schiit changed those rules, so...
 
Regarding the original cables on the HE-1000, they are indeed broken. But they're not so broken that you need to buy a $850 cable. I rather like the crotchet style of cabling of the Norne Zoetic. And if you're not trying to get 10-feet of the stuff or adding an extra adaptor cable, it costs $239.99.

 

[markm1]

  I enjoyed the show, quite immensely!
 
But I also recalled, at the same time, why I like speakers, and why I dislike shopping for speakers or going to speaker shows. Was it the amplifier? Or was it the DAC? Or was it one of those fancy new hard drive servers and optimized digital source? Or was it the speaker (a detractor)? Or was it the room (also a detractor)? All these questions went through my head when I was listening to a wonderful DAC presentation in one of rooms - lower level, far side, not the side underneath the hotel entrance. I ultimately decided it was probably a good value, according to the rules of buying stuff at markup prices at a dealer. But Schiit changed those rules, so...
 
Regarding the original cables on the HE-1000, they are indeed broken. But they're not so broken that you need to buy a $850 cable. I rather like the crotchet style of cabling of the Norne Zoetic. And if you're not trying to get 10-feet of the stuff or adding an extra adaptor cable, it costs $239.99.

I had a great time with Sheldaze, Daniel and others. I read a glowing review of the Dharma HP (which I own) with the Dana cable. But, it is quite steep. I've been looking at Norne's Draug-2 and Forza cables for my Dharma. Looking at about 3 M with an adapter w/ balanced and unbalanced terminations will probably set me back close to $500.
 
Enjoyed spending a good bit of time in the Can Mania room. It would be have been nice to have more venders. Maybe next year a meet? Mark Sossa at Well Pleased Audio told us he might be tapped to set up the HP space next year. Maybe we can work with him to facilitate some space for a meet.....

 

[yage]

  Unbelievably, I did not win the $12,000 system in the raffle. 

 
If you had, I think we'd have known the location of the next meet...
 
I thought the KEF Muon's were giant killers in the literal sense. Performance-wise... they were ok from where I was sitting, which probably wasn't in the sweet spot. I really liked the setup in the Bricasti / TIDAL room. That sounded well-balanced without any boominess in the bass or shrillness in the presence region. Those folks really knew what they were doing. Contrast this with Zu Audio where a drool worthy Pass Labs stack was ruined by poor speaker placement. They had the speakers in the middle of the room along the long wall with the chairs almost right up against the back wall and too close to allow the drivers to really integrate well. Disappointing.
 
My favorite room, however, was Volti Audio / Border Patrol. Volti's new Rival speaker had a horn loaded tweeter / midrange with a giant bass driver and powered by a BorderPatrol S20 SET amp with a 6SN7 NOS filterless DAC and CEC transport as the source. The speaker looked, uh, homely, but I thought the sound was spectacular. They played some McCartney / Lennon demo tracks and the vocals sounded eerily realistic - effortless microdynamics and nary a hint of the customary horn coloration. They also spun a Springsteen cover and the bass was tight and textured. Also surprising was that I couldn't detect hiss or hum even though the speaker sensitivity is specified as 99 dB. I've heard a Volti / BorderPatrol system before at the 2013 CAF and thought it was the best sounding system then too. When I win the lottery, this is going to be the second system.
 
On the headphone side of things, I really liked the GS-X mk2 with the HE1000 and the LCD-XC. However, I think I'd still rather have the Moon NEO 430HA, even though it's a noisier amp. I thought the BHSE / SR-009 sounded good, but I've heard it sound better at an earlier DC meet, ca. 2013. At that meet they used a Meitner MA-1 as a source. Given that information, I think the QB-9 DSD might have been the weak link in that chain. In other news, I learned that HeadAmp has been considering re-launching the GS-1 with a balanced output in addition to the SE out (though with only SE input) and are working hard on a new electrostatic amplifier of Justin's own design that would sit above the BHSE in both performance and price. Their new website is also live and is marked improvement over the old one. I also learned that I really shouldn't have listened to the MZ2's after hearing the BHSE. I had a short session with the Mytek Brooklyn and LCD-XC's. It sounded quite nice through the bass and midrange, but its treatment of cymbal strikes lacked a little refinement.
 
Klaus Bunge of Odyssey Audio gave an entertaining talk about hi-fi system building. It reminded me to try a nearfield setup (again) with my speaker system.
 
I'm a little concerned that the next CAF is set about a month after RMAF. I don't think we'll be getting any more vendors at CanMania any time soon.
 
EDIT: Corrected the amp model number in the Volti room.

 

[sheldaze]

  My favorite room, however, was Volti Audio / Border Patrol. Volti's new Rival speaker had a horn loaded tweeter / midrange with a giant bass driver and powered by a BorderPatrol P20 SET amp with a 6SN7 NOS filterless DAC and CEC transport as the source. The speaker looked, uh, homely, but I thought the sound was spectacular. They played some McCartney / Lennon demo tracks and the vocals sounded eerily realistic - effortless microdynamics and nary a hint of the customary horn coloration. They also spun a Springsteen cover and the bass was tight and textured. Also surprising was that I couldn't detect hiss or hum even though the speaker sensitivity is specified as 99 dB. I've heard a Volti / BorderPatrol system before at the 2013 CAF and thought it was the best sounding system then too. When I win the lottery, this is going to be the second system.

I agree...
 
The sound of John's voice had me feeling downright sentimental. I recalled so many other artists who have passed in recent years, recent being a relative term. This was the best thing I heard at the entire show.

 

[ScottFW]

I enjoyed the show, would have liked to have another hour or two but I couldn't make it back on Sunday.
 
The giant KEFs sounded pretty good, at least from what I was able to hear over ALL THE PEOPLE TALKING in that room both times I stopped by. Maybe I should have tried again later, but so many people were checking out the VPI gear and there were about a dozen company reps there to accommodate all interested shoppers that getting everyone to simultaneously **** seemed unlikely.
 
The Bricasti/Tidal setup sounded great, with the caveat that I only heard it playing classical music. Tons of macro and micro dynamics, strings were detailed with zero added harshness or glare, overall a transparent and lifelike presentation. Unfortunately, like a toilet made out of solid gold, a $200K audio rig is not in the cards for me right now.
 
I liked the Benchmark room with the Studio Electric speakers, which threw a much bigger sound than I expected given how small they were. The various Alta speakers sounded pretty good too and they had multiple models in different rooms driven by the same model of VPI integrated amp. I probably wouldn't kick that gear out of my house either.
 
I never got to sit in the middle of the Zu speaker setup, but I'm not sure that would have changed the shouty midrange and lack of presence. Plenty of thunderous bass, but the overall tonal balance was a bit dull and I seriously doubt that was the fault of the upstream gear.
 
Biggest take-home from the show for me is that I really need to spend some time optimizing my speaker placement. They are a little too close to the back wall, and I am sitting too far away relative to how far apart they're spaced. I've allowed that placement to be constrained by other crap I have in my basement man cave listening room, but a quick experiment with sitting closer tells me that changes are in order if I'm to stop handicapping my awesome speakers. They will come about another foot forward into the room, and I'm going to move some stuff around so I can set them wider apart. That should go a long way to taming the slight "room boom" and cleaning up the soundstage.
 
Oh yeah... headphone stuff. Of course the BHSE & Stax sounded great, glad I finally got to hear that setup and I'm coming around to the fact that I'm going to need some Stax in my life sooner or later. The Mytek Brooklyn and the PrismSound Callia DACs both sounded very good, even though I had to "suffer" through wearing 10 lb. Audeze cans to hear them.

 

[Psalmanazar]

All the NOS DACs seemed to be a bit grainy to me. So many of the speaker setups had treble and bass problems too. Many rooms sounded good but didn't have any rock or classical recordings I was familiar with. Most of them pulled the old trick of just having random jazz, Diana Krall, 80s Steely Dan that has no bass just sparkle. Diana Krall is a lot easier to reproduce than Ginger Baker and Tony Allen. I came armed with a couple CDs, one of which was well-recorded and the other was Carcass but most of these setups didn't have CD transports, just random music servers and netbooks, a few of which had poorly implemented ESS Sabre DACs I could pick out.

The Alta speakers did sound great in the VPI rooms but again were playing classical music or jazz nobody had ever heard of.

Also how can the same guy who makes the BHSE (makes Stax sound good!) make the GS-X mk2? Sheldaze description that the LCD-X running out of it "sounded like a salt shaker" was apt. The staging also wasn't great either.