Ok so at long last I finished my post on the meet
With pics no less.
Our 1st HeadFi meet for 2017
Well it had been a while since we all had a meet and there was a WHOLE bunch of developments since our last meet back in 2016.
And at this meet we were treated with 2 major treats and several other unexpected treats as well.
Several local audiophools have picked up the baton of AOIP (Audio over IP) and run with it.
Of note were Atomic Bobs rig, along with gefski’s and Musiqboys.
They all were running the Dante network with Rednet and Atterotech DDC boxes feeding their dacs which were a mix of Mike Moffet designs, a Theta, a Yggy (Yggdrasil), and a Bimby (Bifrost Multibit) and a Moby (Modi Multibit) along with their amps and assorted HP’s.
These 3 setups were all connected via a Dante digital audio network and were able to ‘interact’ with each other.
This ability to patch the digital audio stream from one location to another is inherent to the Dante network and we even had a Dante technical engineer on hand to observe what we were creating.
We believe this is a first for a headphone meet where 3 different users each with unique computers (an iMac, a NµC running windows 10, and a laptop also running Win10) were able to send and/or receive any players output to or from any other player.
In fact Atomic Bob was able to ‘patch’ the output from gefski’s iMac to his own laptop, run that signal thru his DSP stack (which applied several EQ and spatialization optimization ‘adjustments’), then feed it back to gefskis dac and amp and headphones.
All in real time.
This ability to ‘patch’ the digital audio stream from one playback system to another, and then back again has some amazing potential, most noteably if someone wants to hear what an ‘optimized’ and customized playback experience using EQ and a variety of DSP plugin sonic tweaks can deliver on THEIR system.
One such is the SW Immersion Virtualizer which moves the sound field out and away from inside your head.
This is a desirable sonic quality that many seek.
And there are many other DSP plugins that can be used to tailor the SQ to better match what and in the way we desire to hear our music.
The routing and s/w needed to accomplish this is a bit complex but needless to say AB has the setup to make it happen and make it look easy.
The second treat was hearing Musiqboys dialed in system.
It took it a while for the system to warm up and start singing but once that happened the Realness began to shine thru.
I especially liked it with my set of 800’s but then of course I’m biased that way…
And I hope that those who did hear his setup will chime in and add their comments as well.
I also got a chance to hear the Focal Utopia’s on this setup.
And I must say I did hear some mighty nice potential, but they needed more break in hrs before I would come to any conclusions.
And I do look forward to being able to hear both the Utopia’s and the Elear’s, that are well ‘seasoned’, in a back to back comparison in the future.
And there several other setups in attendance as well but I didn’t get a chance to delve into them very much and I hope others will post about them.
But I did get pictures, so I hope these setups will get identified and a description added as well.
All in all the time just flew by and by the time I knew it, it was time to pack up and head out.
Sorry if I missed your setup but the time did just whizz by and then, I was helping pack up to leave.
I’d say it was a landmark meet in many ways and I hope that we will continue this trend in the future.
So in closing, we get 'em started early at our meets…
JJ
