[Tyson]

Don't have a lot of time to post right now, so I'll be brief. I'll list the equipment I was impressed with, and then equipment I was not as impressed with. I will say upfront that there really wasn't any bad gear at the meet, it was all good, just some was "gooder" than others

Impressed with:
RS-1's with Yellow Senn pads. Wow, transformed the RS-1s in to very listenable headphones, all the brightness and brashness was gone, very nice, and sounded great out of a PPA and other Solid State amps

Melos SHA-1 was very impressive for an older piece of gear. It's actually a line stage (preamp), but it happens to have a really, really kick @ss headphone output stage.

Ack DACK was much different than I thought. I expected it to sound slow, syrupy, and soft. Instead I heard dynamic, clean, clear, and musical. Very nice, and an amazing bargain.

PPX3 - this is the 3rd time I've gotten to hear this amp, and everytime I do I'm more impressed with it. Great tube headphone amp, with better bass and clarity than the classic tube sound. Still warm and listenable too. I liked it a lot.

Senn HD 650's - definitely more lively and transparent than the HD600's (which I used to own). I liked these a lot, and would buy a pair, except for the fact that I cannot use open headphones in my current situation.

Xin SuperMacro - it wasn't the best amp there, but the fact that it kept up pretty darn well with some heavy hitters spoke very well for it. Great portable solution, but I'd probably not use it for a primary home amp (ie, it doesn't have tubes

)

Beyerdynamic DT250 - probably the best closed headphone at the meet. Most balanced sound and it sounded good out of both the Solid State amps, and the Tube amps. Other headphones tended to sound their best on either a SS amp, or a tube amp, but not both (RS-1 on SS, HD650 on OTL tube, AT 900 on tubes, etc....)

X-Can's V1 heavily modded - a friend of mine went in and basically gutted my v1 X-cans and put in all premium parts, caps, diods, chips, tubes, all radically upgraded. The sound was as good as anything I heard there, which suprised me. I've been using it in a 3rd system that I hardly ever listen to. I'm now moving it to the primary system, it really sounded that good.

Unmodded AKG K271 - Got to compare my modded K271's with Donovans unmodded K271's, and I have to say that I preferred his set overall. More immediate, deeper and stronger bass, and better soundstage. I'm going to remove the cotton out of my K271's and leave in only the blu-tak, to see how that changes things.

Less Impressed
PPA - yes, a good amp, but it just sounded a bit cold and uninvolving after listening to all the great tube amps and hybrid amps we had on hand. I've got a set of glassman buffers on order for it, but if they don't dramatically improve it in the "musical" area, it is going off to be sold.

Perreaux - not a good amp. Every headphone we tried with it sounded noticably worse than every other amp we had on hand. It's better than the stock output on a lot of devices, but really got clobbered by the other gear at the meet, IMO.

Other than that, it was a great time, lots of good discussion, lots of good music, good food, and very good scotch

 

[Zoide]

Tyson:

After iamdone's famous claims, I must ask you: 2X-S vs. RS-1 ?

 

[Tyson]

Without question the 2x-s remains the best headphone I've heard.

 

[sacd lover]

Tyson, was the dack you used the new version or the old one?

 

[Zoide]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyson Without question the 2x-s remains the best headphone I've heard.

But would you say the RS-1 makes a good complement to it? I'm trying to get them, as you can see

 

[averydonovan]

Just some brief impressions of some of the gear, although I will probably mess up some of the model numbers:

Grado SR325: Had bowl pads and was hooked into a Perreaux SHX-1 (if I remember the model number correctly) from a Shanling CD player's tubed outputs. Not as bright as expected and the bass hit hard and with lots of impact. Maybe the CD player's tube outs and the Perreaux were taming things but I liked the sound of the SR325.

Grado SR125: Had bowl pads and was hooked to a SuperMaco from a Sonica Theatre. Much as I expected, a lot like the SR225 except not quite as much bass impact and a bit brighter. Maybe I just like Grados in general, since I liked these too.

Grado RS-1: With bowl pads and Senn pads from an Ack! Dack! and Trevornetwork PPA as well as a Melos SHA1 and Denon 2900 universal player. I've heard these a couple times before but not with bowl pads or unpunched Senn pads. Grados seem to love tubes and I liked them best with the Melos. I liked the bowl pads a bit better than the unpunched Senns since the unpunched Senns obscured some detail. Hearing all these Grados again makes me want to get another set except for the fact that I need isolating cans.

Audio Technica ATH-A900 modded: Nice sounding overall. Vocals aren't nearly as sweet or as prominent as my AKG K271 and the bass was a bit much for me but they are a lot of fun to listen to for beat-driven music. I did not like them at all on the Trevornetwork PPA but on Tyson's Radii amp's transformer output and on my PPX3 they sounded quite nice. They seem to like tubes a lot. The isolation and comfort are both excellent. Although I'm not likely to get them any day soon, I wouldn't mind a pair of my own.

AKG K271s modded and w/ Headphile cable: The higher-end was more open than on my pair, but the soundstage a bit collapsed and the sound a bit drier. I'm keeping my pair stock, except for the cable. Even though I was less than enthused with the mods, it is still a very nice pair of headphones.

Beyerdynamic DT250-250: The first thing I thought of when I put them on were HD600s. They have a similar overall balance, with a more full bass and much less soundstage. Compared to the K271, they have more bass and treble and less midrange and are more evenly balanced (I'll readily admit that the K271 has a prominent midrange) although they don't have as large of a soundstage as the K271. I liked the sound a lot overall.

Trevornetwork PPA: Very clean sounding but also very sterile. The channel separation was too extreme and although imaging was precise, it was just too sterile for me. The RS-1 was the only set of cans out of the few I tried that I really enjoyed on there, it just made other sets sound too lifeless.

Tyson's PPA: Not as sterile as the Trevornetwork PPA but still a bit too much on the sterile side for me. Good clean sound but lacks emotion.

Xin SuperMacro: Much tinier than expected and sounds great. I could not believe I was listening to such a tiny, battery-powered amp. The only way I can really describe it is that it sounds much bigger than it is.

Perreaux SHX-1: Not a bad sounding little amp at all. It seemed well mated to the Grado SR325 and didn't do bad with my AKG K271. I liked it better than the PPAs since it wasn't nearly so sterile sounding and is more enjoyable to listen to. The SuperMacro sounded smoother and more fun, though, and it really gets clobbered by the hybrids and tube amps.

X-Cans v3 (iirc) modded: It was hooked to the direct outputs of the Shanling. I thought it sounded pretty good overall. It easily trounced the Perreaux in soundstage, smoothness, and detail.

Melos SHA1: Very nice-sounding amp. It really paired well with the Grado RS-1. I only listened to it for a few minutes but was quite impressed. For such an old amp it holds its own very easily.

Radii hybrid: Only briefly listened to it. Being able to compare the transformer and OTL outputs is nice. I only listened to K271s and ATH-A900s out of it. The A900s did better on the transformer output, the K271s I liked better on the OTL output. Quite a nice-sounding little amp.

Musical Fidelity X-Ray CD player: This player's analog outputs were hooked to my PPX3 which was setup as I have it in my own home (same power cable, tubes, and interconnects) and it was neat to be able to compare it to how my E-Mu 0404 that I use as my source sounds. The X-Ray seemed a little smoother and slightly warmer and I liked the sound overall.

Denon 2900 universal players: I briefly listened to both a unit with a tubed output stage and another unit with a solid-state output stage, both of course heavily modded. Both are very nice sounding players. I preferred the one with the solid-state output stage a little more since it was actually warmer and smoother than the tubed one and seemed a little more detailed to me. It was neat being able to compare two units of the same model but modded differently.

Not much for me to say about my PPX3 since I've made more than enough comments about it previously. Everybody at the meet seemed to like it and it seemed to do well with every set of cans that were plugged into it. I brought some extra tubes with me but never installed them although I offerred to. The RCA blackplate/cleartop combo seems to be a versatile combination.

I generally liked the gear at the meet. The PPAs were the only pieces of gear that I was a little dissapointed in since they just seemed too sterile, being clean-sounding to a fault. Some people will enjoy them but I'm just not one of them. Both the hybrids (Melos and X-Cans) were quite good. I'm glad that I got to listen to the SR325 and SR125, and that leaves the RS-2 and SR80 as the only modern Grados I haven't yet heard. I finally got to hear the ATH-A900 and can see why some people like them a lot.

What I was really happy about, though, was that I am still very content with my system and although I heard a lot of different sounds, some a little better, I feel that I have found an excellent balance in my system and any noticable upgrades to the sound will require a disproportionate capital investment. In other words, I feel I've reached very close to the point of diminishing returns and that leaves me with a very satisfied feeling.

It was enjoyable meeting up with the various folks that came in. Only myself and Tyson had been at the meet he hosted in late 2003 and only a tiny handful of gear at this meet had been at the previous meet. The funnest part of the meets is just being able to talk to people and putting faces and real personalities with the screen names. Head-Fi members thax and skulker were there as well as a few members that are primarily on Audiocircle. I'm glad that we had another Denver meet and hopefully we will do this more regularly. Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2005 is coming up this fall and with any luck a few of us will run into each other then.