I feel it a good idea to offer a few comments about what I saw and heard at the meet. I did'nt listen to everything(I've actually heard most all of it anyway) and attended mostly to mend fences with Ray and hang with my good buddy Tyll(Semper-fi right back at you Brother).
I saw and heard live examples of the new Headroom line-up back in febuary when we visited Montana. The Max amps were only available as working circuits with the cosmetics presented as Computer generated renderings. I thought the amps looked good and my impressions were further enforced when I saw them in person.
Tyll and Jamey are very high on the sonics of the new amplification circuits and I fully understand why,they sound fantastic. I'll offer that I think as great as the amps are, the DACs are where Headroom has really hit a home-run with the new line-up. I have long been an advocate and fan of stand-alone DACs and have auditioned and owned quite a few,from the earliest Levinson,MSB and Krells to the very latest,(and very highly dissapointing) Musical Fidelity X-DAC V3. Getting a DAC right is not an easy thing as evidenced by the hits and misses launched by Krell and MF over the years. Headroom has the DACs right. They sound universally superior to any low-cost DACs I've yet heard. From the Overture DAC I heard months ago to the latest on-board DACs of the new Balanced Max amp,these DACs are all world-class. The fact that the DACs can be added to most of the new Headroom amps as an upgrade is just cake for already sweet icing. To say that I'm impressed with what Headroom has done here is a huge understatement. With this latest round of new products Headroom remains at the top in terms of State of the (Solid-State) Headphone amp art.
My favorite new Headroom amp has to be the Desktop with Max Dac and power supply options,using the standard amp module. I do think the upgraded Max amp module option is superior and is very much worth the upgrade cost but the Desktop with the DAC and outboard PS is the s**t,twice. I can think of no other amp that offers as much versitility and performance for anywhere near the $1400 asking price of the Desktop with those upgrades. Show me the other solid-state with great sonics,an amazing on-board DAC and a really,really effective outboard power-supply and I'll shut up. The Desktop is amazing.
I had'nt talked to or seen my friend Ray Samuels for a few months and it was good to see him again. He's the very first adult male to ever get in my face and live to tell about it,so I must love him to death. His amps sounded great as usual and I'll say again that the X-10B is the very "best" Phono-Stage I've ever heard and recently I've sampled most of the much,much more expensive units. Ray builds great amps but his phono stages are truly the stuff of legend. I heard and commented on the Raptor months ago and predicted then that Ray would sell them as fast as he could build them and that has come true. I still think Ray Samuels does the purest sounding amplification circuits. As much as I love cross-feed I shudder to think what effect that would have on one of Ray's amps. I think his strong desire to keep his amps as pure and direct as possible is what makes them so great.
It was also good to see Mikhail. I did'nt get a chance to listen to his stuff purely because I did'nt feel comfortable doing so,given our history. I'm glad he made the effort to stop and say hello. That proves my point that warriors are not good diplomats and further proves who the bigger man among is. I'm sure we both wish we could start over from scratch. Thanks again Mikhail and I sincerly wish you the best of luck.
It was also great to see and hang with all my head-fi buddies again. I'm glad I came and was glad you all were happy to see me. The very loud and warm welcome made me feel great and the big bear hugs I got from Tyll,Rey and Todd were super.
Yeah,I lost weight,mainly to become a more competitive racer and take back some of the advantage I give away to smaller drivers. I have'nt won a race yet but I did qualify #1 and took 3rd place at a Regional Heat a few weeks ago in my Cobalt. Racing is many,many times more expensive than Headphone stuff but it's also a bit more thrilling. Not really more fun but much,much more risky and dangerous. I qualified #7 for tomorrow's race only because my front-line car was disqualified(again) for not having a plug-in for the lap timer(I cut it when I added a new sponsor sticker) and I had to go to my second car which was not set-up for the short,tight track we're racing on. I made some changes and my last pratice lap was fast enough to have qualified me #1. I'm hoping for a win tomorrow. Sorry to get off on racing stuff in a meet impressions thread but I'm not gonna post anywhere else and racing is where my head is now.
