[Evoz]

I had a great time today. Met alot of truly nice people. Thanks once again bobjew for hosting the meet and letting us use your awesome house. Just wanted to start up this thread and I will post more tomorrow about the meet. For those who took pictures, please upload! As of now,good night

--Simon

 

[ayt999]

what's this?? basically no one has posted yet? what sort of lazy people are you guys.

as for me... I went out for dinner with my friends right after the meet then headed off to the frat, where apparently we decided to start a game of "Axis and Allies" around midnight... and we sort of ended right now a bit before 6AM since the other team was too tired to continue and quit. so I guess the Axis won. woo hoo.

I'm heading off to bed... and I assume I won't be up too early, so the pictures and my captions will have to wait until then.

it was great meeting a few familiar faces and several new people, especially since a lot of the people I saw at the meet were ones I've been wanting to meet in person for a while. thanks a lot for coming to the meet. hope you guys had plenty of time to enjoy my gear.

 

[gundam91]

Bobjew, thanks for hosting! And thanks to everyone for dragging your gear to Bob's place in this insanely hot weather. The weather was so hot that when I got home, one of my amps was stuck to the styrofoam-like packaging material in its shipping box. I had to use Goo Gone to wash it off the front and back faceplates. It was good to also meet some people in person finally and attach faces to their screen names.

 

[zeplin]

Don't worry, I'm going to post a semi-long impression of the hottest (literally) meet ever!

I had such a great time at the meet and it was even better to meet so many of the people I've been wanting to meet ever since I first joined the forums!!!

You guys are all so cool...I just wish everyone in the world could be more like the people on head-fi. It's great to hang with people that all have so much in common!! If I will say one thing about one headphone, it is that the biggest surprise was the R10 not astound me like I thought it would??!! Maybe it was because of the equipment hooked up to it, I don't know, or have clue as to what sounds best with it? Regardless though, I was shocked that it didn't sound like I thought it would! Anyways, there will be more later. Once again, thanx to everyone for providing such a great and wonderful meet...it was the absolute best day I've had in a long, long time!

edit: gundam, your avatar kicks arse...I love it!!

 

[skitlets]

So what equipment/headphones were at the meet? Yeah, and I know what you mean about the heat. San Francisco has been pretty hot too, though I'm sure berkeley must be another 5-10 degrees warmer.

 

[ayt999]

well, here's the stuff I brought to the meet:
Accuphase DP-85 SACD player
Blue Hawaii amp
Gilmore Balanced Reference amp
grace model 901 amp
grado HPA-1 amp
MDR-R10
ATH-L3000
ATH-W2002
PS1
Omega II
among other stuff like cables and power equipment.

btw, the meet was in Oakland at bobjew's fantastic loft. I scrapped the idea of having it at my apartment in berkeley after seeing the number of people interested in going to the meet.

 

[NeilPeart]

Another Head-Fi meet has come and gone and I'm left with another headphone-void in my heart...er ears. Thanks to bobjew, whose hosting again was generous and hospitable - I love his art-infused pad and his home-theater system is very nice (love the Thiels). It was also cool to meet Xin, of Superxxxx fame with his latest creation, the smaller-than-SR71 SuperMono. It was nice to see the familiar faces of gundam91, ayt999, zeplin, raif and utep10 (as well as meeting some new ones like evoz and blessingx). Bruce, thanks again for the transportation and good company. I had a blast as usual, and I renewed my love for the Sennheiser sound; the DAC1->XLR ICs->Gilmore Reference->HD650/Zu system was simply my favorite of the meet, though the PS-1 on that same rig is not to be sneezed at. Still, I think my honeymoon with the PS-1 is over (we were never truly married, however - it was more of a raunchy affair

); I preferred the HP-2 on the modded Melos for plenty of tunes (though the PS-1 is much for fun than the HP-2). The R10 wasn’t at its top form, and I contribute that to a lack of synergous amps (even the old-school MPX3 with KenRads and Sylvanias wasn’t enough) – its magical midrange was there but the bass was absent. The Accuphase DP-85->WEEBL->Omega II actually impressed me more here than ever before, and with such little “charge-up time.” Hearing Dire Strait’s “Money for Nothing” on this rig was simply magical, with that famous guitar riff reverberating like never before. This is one example of electrostatic done right (I haven’t encountered a dynamic rig that has rendered this song so amazingly – I fear only the Orpheus could do it better). The AT cans failed to impress me yet again, though no Sugden Headmaster or EAR HP4 was present for a synergous combo (the L3000 and W2002 did sound their best with the HR-2, however). I had a wonderful time as always; what is better than spending an afternoon with a bunch of cans and some sweaty guys? Please don’t answer that question!

 

[ayt999]

and here are the pictures. they are blurry for some reason, most likely I was lazy due to the heat and I didn't care too much then about how they looked. I now wish I was more careful when taking them.

my MDR-R10 was connected to bobjew's MPX3 most of the time... I thought it would have been a decent combo but apparently wasn't to the liking of zeplin? anyways, I'm working on having Mikhail make an amp for me (as a sneak preview, the title of the spreadsheet he gave me is "Supra and SDS Premium.") so next time I should have a great setup to power it.

here's the MDR-R10 and old style MPX3

the source was bobjew's Philips 963 (if I remebered correctly)

my source (DP-85) and other amps (BH, 901, HPA1) were in the middle of the room next to Chinchy's setup. mine is barely in the picture, Chinchy's stuff takes up most of the photo. apparently I didn't take a picture of my own stuff too much so this is all I have of my DP-85 and Blue Hawaii.

I guess my setup is barely in this pic too. that's zeplin's head with a PS1 on it blocking the view to Chincy's Melos amp and source. my grado HPA1 and Sony D465 sits on top.

my gilmore reference in between gpalmer's HR-2 (Chinchy brought it over, gpalmer couldn't attend due to still being in Scotland.), NeilPeart's DAC1, and utep10's source and power thing. the setup was source -> glass optical -> DAC1 -> big XLR cables -> balanced reference.

gundam91's setup. the HP100A was much larger than I thought.

custom made plugs made by raif to short the unused inputs on Chinchy's amp. they look so cheap.

zeplin sets out to figure out why his speaker amp hisses. (I think that is what he was doing at least.)

zeplin's speaker amp

HD25-1

MDR-R10

stock HD580 with Zu cables next to NeilPeart's HD580 with parts from other HD's

3G meets 4G

iPod straight to the R10

SR-71 and supermono

my pictures are so horrible.

guess who.

NeilPeart and raif jamming with PS1's. we had two of them at the meet.

raif was going to start a meet impressions thread during the meet, while Chinchy was messing with the memory card reader. I guess they decided that resizing those pictures at the meet was too much of a hassle and gave up.

listening to some audio-technica and STAX cans

there were a lot of people at the meet.

Bob's flat was so nice. look at all the art he has around the place

another shot

that's most of the photos I took, but there are a few more here:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v149/a...tember%202004/

 

[bobjew]

Thanks for the photos, ayt, still re-hydrating! It was a great time made better by the attendees. More to come.

 

[Zoide]

Thanks to bobjew and blessingx for the Supermono pics and impressions on this thread .

Surely, there are more people who listened to it?

I'm pretty sure the community would be pretty happy if you guys could add your impressions to the thread I linked above

 

[tom hankins]

Were you guys able to run the HD650 balanced through the Gilmore amp? If so, what cables were you using? Thanks!

 

[bhd812]

neil lol you look like a fun dude to hang out with...lol I always laugh at your pics..lol

 

[raif]

I had to restore some of neilpeart's faith in the ps-1.

In the picture he is playing the drum intro to Money for Nothing, by Dire Straits.

 

[NeilPeart]

I bet you’re a handful yourself, bhd812 – you’re a trouble-maker just like me!

In that particular picture I was playing some air drums to accompany Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing." That song was very impact-full and detailed with the PS-1, but nothing compared to hearing the song with the Accuphase DP-85->Blue Hawaii->Omega II - the electrostatic rig was simply at another level of impossible ethereality (sorry, raif the PS-1 isn't the one for me anymore, but it's still my favorite Grado - enjoy your more accurate, boring HP-1000 everyone!

). While I am still not a fan of Stax (or any electrostatic audio gear for that matter), that song still stands out in my head as one of my best audio experiences ever. The HD650/Zu was not balanced, though the connection between the DAC1 and Gilmore Reference was, and it was amazing. I do recall listening to gpalmer's Meridian 588->Acoustic Zen XLR ICs->Gilmore Reference->Balanced Silver Dragon->HD650 (at the SoCal meet) and it's still my favorite example of headphone soundstage (K1000, L3000, PS-1, R10, OII didn’t do what the balanced HD650 did for me). A fully balanced rig is just so much more natural to my ears - even the balanced PS-1 had a near-Sennheiser-like soundstage (a feat that is truly amazing, IMO). After hearing the fully balanced 588/GR rig with both the HD650 and PS-1 I knew a balanced system was the only path for me. I’ll be picking up my own Gilmore Reference in the future and the HD650/Balanced Zu Mobius as well (damn meets always do this to me – hence the DAC1 purchase).

 

[ayt999]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tom hankins Were you guys able to run the HD650 balanced through the Gilmore amp? If so, what cables were you using? Thanks!

so ya... it doesn't work too well if the guy with the balanced amp (me) doesn't have a single balanced can, and the people with the Senns don't have balanced Senn cables (being that they don't have a balanced amp to use it with) so we were not able to use it fully balanced. I was hoping that I could get a Senn cable to mutilate and make into a balanced one by the meet, but that didn't happen since I couldn't get a Senn cable in time. next time we'll be more prepared, the meet was organized and held only a few weeks after the idea was brought up that it was hard to organize something slightly complicated such as this.

it was balanced up to the balanced headphone outputs on the amp... but that doesn't help too much does it.