[Rynsin]

  Someone needs to bring a balanced pair of TH900s!

 
Balanced anything, for me. I haven't been able to hear the difference between single ended and balanced, even on my LCD-3s. Perhaps because I've never listened on anything but the stock Audeze balanced cable, or perhaps because I've never heard a system that was balanced end-to-end. I'd love to be able to compare the same headphones/setup as single-ended and balanced.

 

[goodyfresh]

   
Balanced anything, for me. I haven't been able to hear the difference between single ended and balanced, even on my LCD-3s. Perhaps because I've never listened on anything but the stock Audeze balanced cable, or perhaps because I've never heard a system that was balanced end-to-end. I'd love to be able to compare the same headphones/setup as single-ended and balanced.

My Sony MDR-1A headphones cmoe stock with a balanced cable.  Two wires each and a separate ground for each channel

 

[coinmaster]

Okay so it's official. The meet is tomorrow at the Hartford Civic Center at 9am. 
See you there!

 

[TRapz]

  Okay so it's official. The meet is tomorrow at the Hartford Civic Center at 9am. 
See you there!

I don't know if I missed something in the thread, but isn't that a little short notice? I thought we'd be organizing something somewhere and deciding upon it. I also don't know how many people will be free tomorrow, it being Friday- I know I won't be. 
 
Edit: I'm an idiot and don't know anything about buildings in Connecticut. 
 
Why not make it a hockey game/headphone meet? I think it'd be a great combo.

 

[coinmaster]

Too late! It's already decided!
There will be clowns and party animals and cake!
 
Or there could be nobody. Come and find out for yourself!

 

[goodyfresh]

  Okay so it's official. The meet is tomorrow at the Hartford Civic Center at 9am. 
See you there!

Wait what?  This is sudden!  I won't be able to make it at 9am. . .

 

[coinmaster]

Wait what?  This is sudden!  I won't be able to make it at 9am. . .

The clowns will miss your presence 

 
 

Why not make it a hockey game/headphone meet? I think it'd be a great combo.

I think a headphone meet at an aquarium would be better. We all know how well amplifiers and water go together.

 

[psklenar]

  I think a headphone meet at an aquarium would be better. We all know how well amplifiers and water go together.

 
Mystic then?

 

[coinmaster]

Nobody showed up at the Civic Center today!! I paid for all those clowns and party animals too! Lets not even talk about what I had to do to get that cake!

 

[psklenar]

  ... Lets not even talk about what I had to do to get that cake!

 
No, please do!  Please DO talk about what you had to do to get that cake!

Sorry, I was stuck over on Farmington Ave in the office all day.
 
pat----

 

[craigcpj]

So on a semi-serious note to follow up Coinmaster's clown party
 
I can grab a venue in the Branford, CT area on a Sunday with enough planning.
 
I would like to wait til after the Stamford/NYC meeting so that people get to meet each other, see some vendor gear, and then do our local meet/greet to compare and pair our own gear.
 
I personally would enjoy just random get togethers and drink some brew and talk about the scene!
 
 
I'll talk to the venue's that would host us over the next couple of weeks and put some early 2016 dates together so we can have a well thought out gathering of 5-25 people!
 
Just got some LISST "tubes" from Schiit and a beautiful Marantz Turntable - so I'm all excited again to go back through my 3TB of music and try them on a solid-state tube setup!
 
-Craig

 

[DeadHead57]

Are any further meets in the works, I have the Valhalla 2 with stock tubes running off an Audio Engine D1. I am wondering what the next logical step is, upgrading tubes or looking at a new DAC. Any thoughts?

 

[Rynsin]

Are any further meets in the works, I have the Valhalla 2 with stock tubes running off an Audio Engine D1. I am wondering what the next logical step is, upgrading tubes or looking at a new DAC. Any thoughts?

 
Would depend on the most important part of any rig: the headphones!
 
"Upgrading" tubes really just moves from one sort of (hopefully pleasant) distortion with another. "Tube rolling" can have an impact on the sound in a pretty meaningful way, and lots of tubeheads enjoy having a large range to select from on any given day or for a particular type of headphone. So "upgrading" is often really more like "sidegrading" -- no tube is going to you the clinical detail resolution of a solid-state amp (except for tubes that aren't tubes, like the Schiit LISST or whatever it is called), so just try new tubes until you find a sound you like! Meets are a great place to try new tubes, so maybe a few others NE head-fi'ers wanna chime in... *cough cough*

 

[DeadHead57]

I neglected to mention that my phones are the Sennheiser HD600. What I would like to see is more enhanced sound stage. That's why I'm wondering if the D1 is the weak link.

 

[coinmaster]

Are any further meets in the works, I have the Valhalla 2 with stock tubes running off an Audio Engine D1. I am wondering what the next logical step is, upgrading tubes or looking at a new DAC. Any thoughts?

It depends on your budget and what your future plans are. The equipment you have is low/mid-fi, are you planning on upgrading to high-fi or do you want to stay where you are?
If you want better sound stage go for the HD800s, obviously they are the king of the HD line and king of soundstage alltogetherI. The HD800s can sound boring and sterile and lack bass if you don't pair them with the right amp though.
I don't think a dac is going to make anywhere near as much of a difference in soundstage as an amplifier unless you have a really crappy dac.
Tuberolling helps and you can achieve huge changes in how your amp sounds from rolling tubes depending on the design of the amplifier.
On of the biggest things you can do to open up the soundstage is to upgrade the coupling capacitors if your amp has any, but that is a can of worms you probably don't want to open unless you know what you are doing.
 

 no tube is going to you the clinical detail resolution of a solid-state amp

That depends on the amp. I've heard many of the top end big name solid state amplifiers ranging from $5000-$12000 and nothing has ever come close to the realism and detail (not to mention the overall sound quality) of my current tube amp (heavily modified LD MK6) not by a long shot. In fact, depending on the quality of the sound track it becomes hard to distinguish the music from real life, it's kind of spooky (and not to mention amazing).
 
I'm currently in the middle of designing and building a monster headphone amplifier that will blow away anything you've ever heard, loosely based on the design of my current amplifier although there won't really be anything left of the original design when I'm done with it. I can't imagine how it can possibly sound better than it already does but from an engineering perspective there is huge room for improvement.
I'm hoping to have a finished prototype complete by May, until then I won't be attending any meets.