[n3rdling]

Quote:

 
I bet those blue rectifier tubes throw off some serious radiation when they light up!
Instant X-ray's!!! I'll remember to bring my geiger counter if and when I have a chance to get near Frank's table.

I was reading on Mercury rectified tubes a bit last night and read that staring at them is actually kinda bad for your eyes  Too bad they're too pretty to look away.

 

[mrspeakers]

Wow, what a great event you guys had... Can't wait to meet n3rdling and see this gear at the san Diego meet!

 

[purrin]

Quote:

so the Lyr sounded great with the HE6?

Darn, this was one of the things I wanted to do, but got too distracted and forgot about. The HE6, as expected, sounded awesome out of the EF5. My intuition tells me the Lyr->HE6 setup would work well. The HE6 was too bright on my rig, which is brighter than the Lyr.

 

[FrankCooter]

 
Major thanks and appreciation to CEE TEE, Renulte, and Susan for picking up the ball and pulling the load on this one! You guys did a great job and I had a blast! Best part, as always meeting an ever increasing circle of audio devotees and just plain good people.
 
Time flies at these meets, so there's always people and equipment you miss and later regret, but I always come away with something new. My main equipment interest was checking out the new high end ortho's. I own and like an HE-5, so I'm definitely interested in going further down this road at some point. I got considerable time with the HE-6 and the LCD-2.They are both great headphones, and to me at least, clearly a step above the dynamics at similar price points. Under meet conditions, with different signal chains, I couldn't choose a preference. I'd be happy building a system around either. I do prefer both to any of the lower end Stax that I've owned. Ultimately, that the O2, while containing flaws of its own,  goes a level deeper in resolution, detail, and nuance. For now, I'll continue down the electrostatic path. If I had to rate my own SR-507, I'd put it on the same level as the ortho's. No surprize, as they are all in the same price league.
 
I didn't get to all the commercial vendors, but I did spend time at the Schitt and Bottlehead tables.
 
The Schitt amps are major "bang-for-the-buck" values. They sound excellent regardless of price. Particularly interesting is their hybrid tube- mosfet model , which is one of the few dynamic amps at anywhere near this price point that properly drive the new ortho's.
 
I've watched the Bottlehead stuff for years, and if I wasn't a scratch buider, this is where I'd begin a DIY journey. The value level of the kits is exceptional, and the circuits are very well thought out. What really distinguishes Bottlehead is the incredible support structure that goes along with the kits. It's great to see "Doc" and his crew becoming  a central part of the Head-Fi community.
 
Individual systems that impressed me were of course n3rdling's awsome collection of the best headphone gear ever built. Miles is one generous and trusting guy! I'd be paranoid to death turning loose that kind of gear with 75 strangers. Really appreciate you bringing this collection and letting us all see just what is really possible.
 
My neighbors Bobcn and Shane had some good sounds going on. Bobcn's LCD-2/ Redwine rig was my favorite of the LCD-2 based systems. Shane's high res. needle drop files pointed the way to go when I eventually get into computer audio. Purrin's new Audio Technica (model escapes me) sounded like a hybrid of the best of Grado and Sennheiser. Lots of great sound from others as well. I enjoyed them all.
 
As always, I want to thank my buddy and tablemate Ironbut for bringing his world class reel to reel tape system and ultra rare and expensive "Tape Project" tapes.  I say it after every meet, but if you have any interest in ultimate high end audio, you need to listen to this tape system if only to establish a reference point of what a source can sound like.
 
Thanks to all again, especially CEE TEE, Renulte, and Susan (who wouldn't even let us buy her lunch). Hope to see you all again!
 
I'll discuss some of the comments about my amplifier in a seperate post. For the moment, I just want to say that at these voltage and power levels the radiation produced by mercury vapor rectifiers is less than that produced by an old black and white television. Still, if anyone is uncomfortable with this, then I will not bring them to future meets.

 

[DjAmTraX]

My fav is the Grado RS1i.  For the money, you can't beat it.

 

[rroseperry]

No, no Frank. Your set up was one of the highlights of the meet. Let people who are worried wear lead.
 

 

[livewire]

@ Frank,
 
I wasnt at the NoCal Meet, but I was just joking about your gorgeous amp
and it's blue tubes. They do put off UV radiation like a blacklight,
but nothing truly "radioactive". Might be hard on the eyes, that's all.

 

[bobcn]

Quote:

 
I just want to say that at these voltage and power levels the radiation produced by mercury vapor rectifiers is less than that produced by an old black and white television. Still, if anyone is uncomfortable with this, then I will not bring them to future meets.

 
Frank, please continue sharing your works of art with us. They really are special and a treat to hear and see.
 
Besides, except for being dumped in a vat of toxic waste, radiation is the only other socially acceptable way to attain super-hero [size=12pt]compatibilities[/size].  And, although I'm not certain, the trivial levels of radiation emitted by your glowing blue tubes seemed to be giving me super hearing.  When I was sitting in front of your amp, within the magical radiation field, my hearing was transported to actual performances. 
 
Unfortunately, when I left the field of the glowing blue tubes, my hearing returned to normal.

 

 

[amphead]

Thank you CEE-TEE, for an epic event! We look forward to your next hosted event for sure. I would also like to extend my heart felt thanks to Amb of the venerable Amb Laboratories for hosting me and my wife to help me cut costs this time. Highlight of the show for me was to listen (after hours) to my new diy towers utilizing the mighty Beta24. I was astonished at the sheer power and clarity that such a beautifully designed fully differential amplifier can attain. My speakers, being a first build had me a bit worried, but the Beta24 carried them through and then some with rich tubey(while of course being 100% solid state) sounding renderings for the demo/characterization. This has given me the desire to eventually build a Beta22 as my budget allows to run these speakers. Laptop > Gamma2 > Beta22 > My diy speakers would finally give me the audiophile sound I have been working towards.
 
It was good to see you again Rockcod! And I enjoyed our discussions about the Beta22 and all things in the audio world and beyond. I had a great Chinese dinner afterwards with Amb, Linuxworks, and my wife Kathi. It was great to see what Linuxworks brought to the event demonstrating the awesome abilties of the Arduino utilized to its maximum capabalities in an audio scenario, as well as the hard drive controller, which controlls an array of drives to deliver their multimedia content. Kudos on such an ingenious implementation! Thank you Frank Cooter, Ironbut, RythmDevils and everyone who attended this highly enjoyable event!

 

[WesMiaw]

Great meet! Great people! A special thanks to CEE TEE, Miguel (I think I got that right), and I'm afraid I don't have the name of the guy who helped me out after the show.
 
I had some great conversations with lots of different people.

 

[FrankCooter]

Ron's (amphead) speakers were stunningly good considering they contained probably $50.00 worth of components. Too bad more people didn't get to hear them. Makes you wonder what the mark up is on commercial speakers.

 

[walfredo]

Awesome meeting!!  Thanks so much to CEE TEE and everybody else who helped to simply showed up and contributed to a fantastic time.
 
It easily surpassed my expectations... and I had them dialed quite high!
 
Anyhow, impressions...
 
1)  Frank, please bring your beauties again in the fall meeting.  I need another round with them.
 
2)  Awesome, friendly, interesting, smart people.  Hard to beat that.
 
3)  Is there a correlation between headphilia and photography?  Too many people with very nice cameras for it to be a random sample of the general population.  Maybe the desire to record and reproduce reality the best we can?
 
4)  Where are the girls?!?  97% or so of the audience was male.  Why such imbalance?
 
5)  Headphones learning:  I'm really a Audio Technica fan-boy!!!  That was the best thing head-fi ever did for my wallet!  A whole bunch to wonderful headphones I won't have to buy to know I like my W1000 and AD2000 better.  

 
6)  More headphones learning:  An Audio Technica W1000X is in my future.  I prefer not to think as damage to my wallet, but as focusing my wallet.  

 
7)  Final headphones nirvana:  Some Stax Omega or Orpheous.... 

  Talk about wallet damage.  Anyhow, thanks n3rdling for showing the gospel.
 
 
8)  Amp learning:  Schiit Asgard and Matrix I-mini are wonderful pieces of accessible gear.  On my buy list...  
 
[]s
Walfredo

 

[n3rdling]

What?!  I went back to the hotel to use the restroom before leaving and heard speakers playing so I walked in and listened for about 10 minutes.  Those speakers sounded great!  I can't believe they're that cheap to build 

 
I forgot to thank the gentleman who helped me unload my gear when I got there (can't remember your name) and all the people who offered to help load back up.  Very kind  ironbut/purrin, if Jude wants to "sponsor" me and pay my ticket I'd probably go to RMAF. 

  I'm just not sure how careful some of those guys would be with gear.  Just about everybody at this meet was careful with gear, but we're all headphone enthusiasts.  

 

[shipsupt]

What more can I say?  CeeTee put on a world class event.  MOT were out in force showing off awesome gear and offering almost irresistible deals.  Most of all it was just great fun to meet some folks from Head-Fi!
 
I guess you could say the meet didn't end for me on Saturday.... I went to the meet wanting the chance to hear a few things that I had my eye on.  Offerings from Woo Audio were on the top of my list to check out.  Thanks to a few folks I got to do just that, including being able to A/B a 6 and 6SE right next to each other with my own headphones (thanks to SanJoseCanJunkie).  My impressions made it clear that I preferred the SE.  I left knowing that a new amp was in my future, but happy enough with my current gear to take my time making a purchase.  Ha, well that lasted until Sunday morning when I was casually reading the for sale forum.  Seems wind016 was at the meet too and decided he was looking to go in a new direction and was willing to part with his WA SE6.  Here we are on Monday night and I'm listening to my new to me Woo!  In spite of the damage to my wallet I'm glad I was able to make this (significant for me) purchase after being able to audition it, something that would not have been possible without a meet like this.  If you have the chance to make it to a meet in the future the opportunity to try before you buy is priceless.
 
I got beat to the punch on some great pictures, but I'm going to put a few up anyway!!
 

 
LCD-2's were out in force!
 

 
Plenty of great headphones to try with some Woo goodness in the background...
 

 
Why did they stop making K1000's?
 

 
First listen for me... nice...
 

 
I was really impressed with the HE-5... for sale forum??
 

 
Side by side comparison anyone?  Where else can you do that?
 

 
In search of comfort for our Grado's!
 

 
Can't resist another shot of Franks beautiful work!
 

 
Let the geek times roll, I mean good times!!  Cool stuff!!
 

 
Thanks again SanJoseCanJunkie for sharing your gear so I could make an informed purchase!
 
 
 
Looking forward to the next meet!  How about a mini meet before the next big one??

 

[Hero Kid]

I only came here to look at the sexy pictures of what looks like a brilliant meet, but then I remembered the Lyr. Where are all the impressions of the Lyr with the LCD-2s and HE-6s?