I finally collected all of my thoughts and photos. Sorry for the late post.
Wow, what a meet!
Thank you
@TSAVAlan for being the chauffeur to the meet. It was a loooong commute from LA to Phoenix.
Thank you
@Muinarc and cat (maybe not for Alan) for the hospitality, and providing a place to stay during the weekend.
Thank you
@koover and everyone else who made the meet even possible! This meet reminded me a lot of the Seattle meets I used to attend, so it was very communal and casual. As usual for me, there were too many things I wanted to listen to, and too many people I wanted to talk to, but not enough time.
In terms of gear, the highlights for me during the meet were listening to the STAX L300 LE, Audeze LCD-1 prototype, Sonoma M1, seeing the RME ADI-2 DAC in-person and using its menu, and seeing some beautiful wooden headphone stands. It was also fun waiting in anticipation for the raffle prizes (thank you Audeze and Schiit for offering the raffle prizes!). Thank you to
@donaldj68 for the generosity when it came to the freebies table. I ended up taking a SACD player with me since I don't have one to play the SACDs I buy from Amoeba Music in Hollywood, hahaha.
I've been contemplating getting the L300 LE for a bit now since it was first announced. Packing a lot of the SR-009 tech into the Lambda series seemed promising. I tried
@VRacer-111's L300 LE on my rig and A/Bed them with my SR-207 and muinarc's SR-007 MKI. I found them really fatiguing without an EQ, similar to the SR-009 (so for those who like the 009's sound, maybe this Lambda headphone is for you). The SR-207 can sound a bit shouty at times from the ~2 kHz resonance peak, but the L300 LE sounded grating to me. I much prefer the sound of the L500 over the L300 LE. On VRacer-111's rig, the L300 LE sounded tamer, but still far too bright for me unfortunately.
The RME ADI-2 DAC seemed like a popular DAC at this meet, with at least 2 rigs having one (
@skippy's and VRacer-111 above. I hadn't previously heard of this little DAC before, but it seriously looks like something I would be interested in to replace my Pulse X Infinity. It basically offers everything I'm looking for in a DAC at a very reasonable price range. I've been having a hard time finding a DAC that does all the ADI-2 DAC does in a similar compact form factor.
Switching to another electrostat system, the Sonoma M1 was interesting to hear. The last time I heard this was at CanJam at RMAF 2016. Hearing it again with music I'm more familiar with, I wasn't a big fan of its sound either. It sounded overly warm to my ears. Mid-way through my listening session, I had to talk to someone over the music and I noticed my voice sounding really nasally. After the conversation, I hummed out a "sine sweep" kind of sound and I noticed a large resonance frequency at the lower frequencies somewhere. I have no idea how the matrix of diaphragms work in the M1, but something seems off with the lower frequencies such that it affects how the music sounds through it. The whole time I was listening to the M1, I was hearing something really off with the bass region, and the resonance frequency thing might be it.
On a higher note, I really enjoyed
@balderon's LCD-1 prototype. It reminded me a lot of a LCD-2 pre-fazor, early serial number, which is by far my favorite LCD-series headphone. It lacked the finess and refinement of the LCD-2, but it retained its overall balanced sound signature, which I value in a headphone.
Speaking of Audeze, I got to listen to the Mobius again and really had a blast with the 3D feature.
@evanrude was a pleasant dude to talk to on all things Mobius. I just got my blue Mobius last week and I love the 3D effect for watching movies and playing video games; it's a very convincing DSP.
I didn't get a chance to listen to the new Sine open unfortunately.
It was a lot of fun talking with
@Zyker about different types of wood. His wood headphone stands are simply beautiful. I usually don't see wood headphone stands at the meets I've been to, so it was refreshing to see something other than black metal headphone stands. The multi-wood stands were out of this world. He was really generous to offer to make me a bamboo stand.
Justin from
@ampsandsound was fun-going and enthusiastic about his amps. The different impedance outputs are a nice feature to have to tune the voicing you hear coming from the amps; you get more bang for your buck. I'd still like to get a vacuum tube amplifier some day for the novelty. Bottlehead and Ampsandsound's amps always look so gorgeous to me.
This was my first time in Arizona, so it was quite the adventure in the ~110F weather, grid-patterned roadways, 2-lane highways, cacti, and many shredded tires along the highway shoulders, hahaha. There was some good food over here too. TSAVAlan, muinarc, and I went to Los Sombreros where I got mole chicken after the meet. I don't know why, but mole doesn't seem to be a very common dish, so I've been on the hunt for some tasty mole and Los Sombreros delivered. The Sunday morning before the long drive back to L.A., we went to a Waffle House. Holy cow those breakfast portions are big. I honestly wasn't a fan of the waffles, ironically enough, but everything else was pretty good.
. Read above post and you can pick this up from me if you have a 99 Classic or Neo. Thank you Doina and you guys need to take that short flight out to see us some time!
