[Niyologist]

The Q train out of Brooklyn is diverted due to track replacement...arghhh gotta take the Q to Coney Island then the N to Times Square but I will.persavere ....

Use the Moovit app if you need to.

 

[msing539]

The Q train out of Brooklyn is diverted due to track replacement...

That's just what the MTA tells you.

 

[szore]

That's just what the MTA tells you.

Alarm set for 7:30

 

[jlbrach]

The Q train out of Brooklyn is diverted due to track replacement...arghhh gotta take the Q to Coney Island then the N to Times Square but I will.persavere ....

at least we now have the national guard on the subway lol

 

[szore]

at least we now have the national guard on the subway lol

Show

 

[G8torbyte]

There's a chain called Emmy Squared that has 5 locations in Manhattan that I highly recommend for anyone who wants to compare Detroit style with NYC style while they're here for CanJam. Here's pictures of their "MVP" and "Colony" pizzas

Thanks for the recommendation. I usually prefer thin crust but the Detroit style was excellent. Had the "Good Paulie" this evening at the Emmy-Squared location just a couple blocks over from Times Square, 48th and 8th St. Looking forward to some awesome CanJam'ing this weekend!

 

[UnknownOperator]

I wish I was there. Duality. Storm. The new Symphonium prototype. Enjoy. Report back.

 

[msing539]

See you all in the morning

 

[DaJustin]

See everyone there tomorrow!

 

[Padellone]

One last call: anyone willing to swap their HE-1 listening slot for mine at 5pm tomorrow? Any other time will do - just hoping to catch the seminar at 5pm tommorow.

If there's no takers, @Padellone, it's yours!

Glad you got to swap times, and thanks again for the offer. enjoy! Look forward to seeing you all tomorrow

 

[goldwerger]

Enjoying a late evening listen to the new Caldera Closed and Bokeh open.

Both are wonderful additions to the ZMF product line. Make sure you make some time tomrorow for check these out...

 

[DaJustin]

Glad you got to swap times, and thanks again for the offer. enjoy! Look forward to seeing you all tomorrow

Do people need to register somewhere ahead of time for exclusive gear listening opportunities?

 

[aaf evo]

Anyone interested in breakfast in the hotel lobby around 8-8:30ish?

 

[BassicScience]

Dateline: 3 days later... Marriott Marquis, New York City

Nice! Then just a short train ride on NJ Transit rail to Penn Station from Newark. The walk is only a few blocks from there to Times Square.

Well, we actually spent the last couple nights in East Amwell Township with my wife's sister. A very pretty area, by New Jersey standards anyway. Last night we went to the sister's daughter's birthday dinner in Princeton, a very pretty town by any standard! After brunch today, we took a NJ Transit train from Princeton Junction up to Penn Station. Great views of the city before we went underground for final approach! A short $20 cab ride later, and we were walking up to registration at the Marriott. First order of business was setting up the audio gear:

Wah? speaker amp? Lemme guess, for the Tungsten?

Definitely for the Tungsten, but I also use it for Susvara, DCA E3, and any other planars that happen to cross my path.

Anyway, I listened to a couple of tunes to make sure the rig sounded great (it did and does!), said goodbye to my wife as she set off for a long walk up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, took a shower, listened to some more tunes, then rang Audio46 to see how busy they were and whether they had the Austrian Audio Composer available for audition. They said traffic was light, and that they did have a Composer, so I walked on over.

My interest in the Composer (other than a natural curiosity about any new audio product that is generating buzz) is that I'd like to get a nice truly portable headphone, one that I could run directly from my phone (Galaxy S10). Upon my arrival, Tony K greeted me and brought over the Composer and a Chord Mojo 2, which I've had no previous experience with. I would have been happy to try it directly from the headphone jack on my phone, but that didn't seem to be in the cards. We connected everything up, and I ran through a few well-worn test tracks:

• Early Damage by Urban Verbs (Early Damage)
• Joshua by Miles Davis (Seven Steps to Heaven)
• Flight of the Cosmic Hippo by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (FotCH)
• Beethoven: Violin Romance No. 1 by David Oistrakh / Vienna Philharmonic

The first thing to note about the Composer is that it is quite lightweight and its clamp force (on my largish head) is moderate but not too loose. The cups don't appear too deep, but I never felt my ears touching anything. The pads feel a bit spartan and their curved surface doesn't provide the most "confident" seal, for lack of a better word. Net result: comfort is very good to excellent, but not supreme. The build quality feels quite solid, though not premium, and it's not quite congruent with the headphone's asking price in my opinion. The big letters (L/R) on the inside of the cups and the funky cable arrangement don't help with the aesthetics. Still, while not a thing of beauty, it's far from ugly either.

The first track above features soaring guitar and ethereal synthesizer lines that spiral through the soundstage leaving reverb trails in their wake. My first impression was that tonality and bass impact/extension were excellent, but the soundstage was rather narrow. Moving on to the Miles track seemed to confirm this, but it also highlighted the nice, airy treble of the Composer on Tony Williams' ride cymbal work. The Composer was conveying the propulsive groove of the track, but it felt like I was a bit further from the stage than I prefer to be. The Bela Fleck track is a bass extension torture test at the climax of Victor Wooten's solo, and the Composer passed without breaking much of a sweat. Impressive! It also rendered string tone sweetly and convincingly on the Beethoven piece. There was not much I could fault about what I was hearing, other than a somewhat constrained soundstage, but I kept having the nagging feeling that this headphone wasn't worth $2700, for my intended use case anyway. And that wasn't even factoring in the additional $600 for the Mojo 2.

I remained curious about the sound of the Composer straight from my phone, so I asked if we could lose the Mojo 2. Tony K interpreted that to mean that I wanted a different intermediate device, and brought over a Questyle M15. Having heard glowing things about this tiny outboard DAC, I decided not to quibble and just plugged it into my phone, and the Composer into it. The M15 has a gain switch (low/high), but volume must be controlled on the phone, laptop, etc. I set the gain to "low" and phone volume about 75% and started again from the top of the playlist. My immediate reaction was that I was now much closer to the stage, and its apparent width had grown noticeably. The sound was also a bit more dense and organic (again, for lack of better verbiage), but no less detailed. All of these were good things by my preferences, and suddenly the Composer became a far more impressive headphone, and its asking price far more sensible! The Mojo 2 had been well and truly dusted by a device costing about one third the price, and with a far smaller footprint to boot! At that point the only "number of taps" I cared about was how many my foot was doing...

Having suddenly and unexpectedly fallen in love with the Questyle M15, I wanted to see how it would drive a less sensitive headphone. I was curious to hear the new Meze Liric 2, but the demo unit was already packed for CanJam, so I "settled" for the Meze Empyrean II, a headphone which had made a very positive first impression on me in a recent audition. I had compared it to the Meze Elite on the prior occasion, and the Empy II kept the sweet timbre of the Elite whilst eliminating the midbass bloat/slowness that I can't tolerate, and all at a lower price point. From what I'd heard, it's my favorite Meze can by far. Anyway, I clicked the gain on the M15 up to "high", kept the phone volume about the same (75%), and went through the playlist again. The Empy II retails for $3k vs. $2700 for the Composer, and while the Meze is perhaps just a bit more resolving, they are both highly competent, neutral, and musical headphones. Both have excellent bass quality and extension. I think the Empy II feels better on my head, except for the material on the stock pads and under the head strap, which I find a little scratchy. That the Empy II could be driven by the M15 as well as the Composer could sort of negated the argument around the supreme portability of the Composer, its supposed "ace in the hole". I didn't really care anymore about driving a headphone straight from my phone's analog jack when the M15 was so small, light, and affordable.

I had come to audition a headphone, and in the process had fallen under the spell of a dongle DAC! One last "acid test" before consummating the marriage: could the M15 drive the DCA E3, a headphone that I already own and love? Given that the E3 is a closed-back, its portability potential already had a higher ceiling than the other two "candidates". Fortunately, Audio46 not only had an E3 available for audition, they had the requisite cable to plug it into the M15. Observation: I like, nay love, Audio46. I crossed my fingers, made sure the gain switch on the M15 was still on "high", cranked the volume on my phone up a notch or two, and hit play again. Results: Amazing sound. Big smile as I looked down at my phone and a dinky dongle DAC and marveled at the current state of audio technology. The quality of sound I was getting for the cost of the equipment producing it was literally blowing my mind. Needless to say, I walked out of the store with the M15 for the show discount price of $211 plus tax. CanJam hasn't even started, and it's off to a good start!

Holy Schiit, I gotta wind this up and get to bed... but just wanted to give a hearty recommendation to Becco, an Italian joint a couple blocks from the Marriott. Great atmosphere and energy, and maybe the best pork chop dish I've ever had. Wine list was great, service was great, prices were more than fair. My wife and I say "check it out". Also thanks to whomever recommended Becco earlier in this thread (sorry, too tired/lazy to look him up). G'night.

 

[DenverW]

I'm in envy of all you lucky attendees! Have an awesome time!