[greyhorse]

ChrisKTO's Liquid Carbon setup.  One smooth sounding system.
 

Robin's audio-gd setup.  The DAC is apparently causing the system to sound more closed-in than neutral, but this was another detailed full-bodied system.
 

FallenAngel's Buffallo 3, Torpedo, Bijou, Balanced Dynalo system.
The Bijou brought my HD-650s to life like I've never heard so far.  Time to sell the Crack and build a Bijou!
 

Trying out my CD-3000s with an O2.  Cost performance of this system is through the roof.
 

Receiving a hex from the 3E booth.
Take that Canon!  Harsh backlighting in a dark room is seriously taxing even a full-frame sensor and Lightroom's noise reduction capabilities.
*photo credits to Eli
 

Henry playing with a mechanical roach of some sort while I ask how cameras can be so small.
*photo credits to Eli
 

MrSpeakers Ether C.
*photo credits to Eli
 

Just in case yours truly shook the camera too much and you can't make out the casework the above shows a Gilmore Electrostatic Headphone Amplifier.
Airy and smooth.  Every time I hear electrostatics it makes me wonder if I'm being silly sticking with dynamics.
 

An Audinst HUD-mx1.
 
 

"Dude, this **** goes down now!"
Some serious headphone convo going on.
 
 

Henry - "See, Olympus' auto-focus system is just faster and better"
Vince - "Whatever man, at least my Panasonic has neutral colours"
Chris - "Don't mind me, I'm just showing off my fore-arms - but yeah, Oly all the way"
 

Aaron carrying off the high-end casual look.
 

Pavel's Hakko soldering iron.  Just seeing this is made me itch to start a project of my own.
 

Smoke in a bottle.
The photographer wishes the kit lens on his Panny had bokeh as smooth as the scotch.
 

HD-800s shot using micro 4/3s.

 

[PeAK]

Nice pictorial, Greyhorse, of all the various setups and mix of people in the shots. I finally found out the identity of Pavel's amplifiers (Bijou, Torpedo and Dynalo) that he had been assembling for the meet from your photos.


I have personal experience of audio types are also being photo centric....it is good thing I did not jump on that tangent during my first meet or else my already limited listening sessions would have been non-existent. In addition to name tags, should equipment tags be an option ? Those tiny head amps barely have enough thickness to discern their names from 5 feet away,,,,maybe if we all used Zeiss glass and pixel peep

 

[greyhorse]

I have personal experience of audio types are also being photo centric....it is good thing I did not jump on that tangent during my first meet or else my already limited listening sessions would have been non-existent. In addition to name tags, should equipment tags be an option ? Those tiny head amps barely have enough thickness to discern their names from 5 feet away,,,,maybe if we all used Zeiss glass and pixel peep

I think most of us head-fiers are gear geeks to a greater or lesser extent.
This easily manifests itself in over-priced headphones and just as easily in camera gear.  At other meets it's been knives and MTBs.
 
Equipment tags are a great idea and something I tried to do, but it's a lot of work.
It would be best if each attendee could make a list of gear along with their names (nicks and IRL).
Having this handy at each table makes it easier to locate the owner in addition to letting everyone know what they're listening to.
 
OT, but If you want to pixel peep, the next meet might be interesting since Henry and myself will both likely have new 24MP cameras to play with.

 

[FallenAngel]

My narcissism is kicking in! Not enough photos of me and impressions of my gear!

 

[charliex]

  My narcissism is kicking in! Not enough photos of me and impressions of my gear!

 
I too noticed that Pavel 

- not to worry, we all still love you

 

[PeAK]

Hello Brian...your reputation precedes you and many were missing your presence
and had nothing but good words to that effect. I hope you are feeling better and enjoyed 
the two sets of pictures and the collage...they collectively covered a good chunk of the activities.
 
The meets have a pretty loose structure that should encourage plug n' play comparison and evaluation.
 
While it might be a little heavy handed, it is possible to add incentives/encouragement to people
to solicit feedback.  SolCal handed each attendee a little card to take to various booths to be ticked
off. We could do something similar by collecting the cards to draw for a giveaway ....something along the lines of say "wire", "interconnect"
or an "balanced adpater".
 
I did try Pavel's Dynalo setup after asking which he preferred with my own music but only
after he walked me through the process of adding a external <USB stick and adding a new playlist.
 
Greyhorse's suggestion to add a descriptive sign at each music station would help.  The O2 headamp, that I missed,
looked like "yet another amp" until I got home and read the back story about it's development.  One of
the attendees mentioned "bang for the buck". Similarly, I would have tested the Bijou and the Torpedo
if I had been aware of them and their virtues advertised.  
 
I saw the HE-1000 and HD-800 phones spend a lot of time at Pavel's station...so I would not be surprised if
commentary is coming down the pipe...  
 
Last...Pavel, just curious about the Dynalo...for one channel, did you create balanced output by adding/pararelling another single ended Dynalo with a inverted input?  Is a balanced Dynalo essentially four single-ended amplfier stages?

 

[nephilim32]

What a meet!! Would've loved to have been there, but i am sure there shall be another.

I also have some new gear for the next meet to audition fir you all. Can't wait to do that.

Also, many thoughts and sympathies go out to Bryan (Charlie X) for a speedy recovery. Very nice man and wish him well!!

Till next time fellas. Great pics....should be more of the Bijou though. Lol!!!

 

[FallenAngel]

 
I saw the HE-1000 and HD-800 phones spend a lot of time at Pavel's station...so I would not be surprised if
commentary is coming down the pipe...  
 
Last...Pavel, just curious about the Dynalo...for one channel, did you create balanced output by adding/pararelling another single ended Dynalo with a inverted input?  Is a balanced Dynalo essentially four single-ended amplfier stages?

 
That is exactly correct.

 

[PeAK]

I was visiting the impressions thread for the large Atlanta meet held on Jan 9 a few weeks before our meet and came across a post by "Frank" commenting on both the quality and size of DAC/headlamps compared to the year 2000 (I.e. much smaller).I can see his point and it might partly explain why the larger setups were shy of more feedback. Likewise, The smaller units might not be taken more seriously for those wanting a tethered unit for their desktop

He mentioned the Torpedo and echoed comments here about newbies and the usual suspects at meets. Atlanta had a lot of variety and quantity of pics in case you did not get your fix in GTA.
Many of the setups had a table card that both listed and background the equipment.

Finally got a chance to digest my note...
.
.
.

A major impression I came away from the event with is something I had been thinking about recently: the ***incredible*** place we are in regards to small amp/dac setups.  When I first got into headphones in the early/mid 2000s, your gear was crap unless your amp weighed at least 40 pounds.  The first round of quality DACs were that big too.  And while there is still some incredible big gear out there, especially for e-stats, the quality we are today getting from things like the Schiit M2U stack, Chord Mojo, Grace m9XX, Liquid Carbon, Bakoon, etc is stupefying.  These setups being this good were just completely unthinkable 5 years ago.  And that really makes these types of events great, because in the past they were really a competition of who was willing to haul the most gear around.  Now there are a lot of options at an event like this.

My second impression was how shocked I was at the difference between the SR007 and SR009.  I put the 007 on and I was wowed...
.
.
.
  

Really regret not getting a chance to hear an HD800 through Tom's torpedos.  The 12AY7 model really sounded great on my HE400i.  Also I gotta make sure I bring @tomb
some more power cables next time  

It's so glad to have a guy like Joe being local, as the demo units he was able to bring, I think, really took the meet to the next level listening option wise.

The quality of attendants personally were off the chart as well, just really a great group.  I was definitely torn any number of times between enjoying conversation and trying to get more listening in.  I think most of the time I opted for conversation, and didn't regret it at all.

If I had a single regret, or more accurately, thing I would change, I want to get some more "newbies" to the meet next time.  Everybody at this meet was very experienced, save for one of my employees, who just happened to walk in.  He was totally blown away, and I think it'd be cool if we could get a few more people who are newer, or haven't had a chance to experience some of the gear we are fortunate to have...
.
.
.
 And we definitely missed those who couldn't make it, but certainly look forward to the next meet.

 

[monoglycer]

  I think most of us head-fiers are gear geeks to a greater or lesser extent.
This easily manifests itself in over-priced headphones and just as easily in camera gear.  At other meets it's been knives and MTBs.
 
Equipment tags are a great idea and something I tried to do, but it's a lot of work.
It would be best if each attendee could make a list of gear along with their names (nicks and IRL).
Having this handy at each table makes it easier to locate the owner in addition to letting everyone know what they're listening to.
 
OT, but If you want to pixel peep, the next meet might be interesting since Henry and myself will both likely have new 24MP cameras to play with.

only 24MP? pfft.....
 
Once again thanks to Pavel for hosting a great meat as always, always nice to see old and new faces.

 

[greyhorse]

only 24MP? pfft.....

Hey, I'd rather Sony came out with a high-end 12MP APS-C mirror-less solution for us low-light shooters. Whether I end up going for the A6300 depends a lot on how much they improved performance in low light. The A6000 was very disappointing in this regard.

 

[RobinK]

Had fun meeting and chatting with people at the meet. Looking forward to the next one. I forgot to give the stax a listen, so I hope they return. Also looking forward to trying the HE-1000 on my big DAC if they also make return at the next meet.

It was unfortunate I couldn't run the big DAC with the LCD-XC setup. The difference the big DAC would have brought would be cleaner sound (lower noise) and a bit more detail. The highs and mids sound more open with tighter bass. Furthermore, the amp will drive a lot more power from the XLR input. The good news is, I have a device that will allow me to utilize it next meet (I actually had it the whole time and completely forgot about it because I never used it in over a year).

 

[PeAK]

Besides the Superbowl time hole, I went down one of the rabbit holes/trends that was evident at the meet: Is there a standard for headphones modified for balanced connections? Beyond the vintage TRS connector delivering a stereo signal using three wires, I have a number of questions about various XLR connectors (3-pin and 4-pin) and how they are used with balanced output amps and whether (and how, again) they are used with plain Jane single ended outputs.

I'll start with a pic I uploaded this morning of a balanced amp with an unfamiliar set of jacks and labeling, below, that is a close cousin of Pavel's balanced Dynalo that kicked off all this curiosity




On the top two connectors, you can see 4 pins and at this point I have figured out that the arrangement and idea is similar to speaker connections where we provide each channel with their own ground/star connection.

I am not so sure about the bottom two connectors (labeled left and right) that provision both trs plugs and xlr plugs. How would you connect a headphone up and which is the preferred plug in this case?

One good outcome from the meet is that I got introduce to a very influential designer named Kevin Gilmore. Unfortunately, I think one of his electrostatic brainchilds was also setup on the same table right beside my 3E prototype and I was, by then, suffering from equipment overload and abstaining from further headphone sampling

Is the amp below the KGSS (aka Kevin Gilmore Solid State) ?

I remembered it being unpacked from a suitcase and,again, got distracted from giving it a listen by lack of focus. It seems to be using a 4-pin xlr. Other than for the convenience of the user with afavourite balanced chord/combination, does it make sense to provide this type of jack on a single-ended headlamp?



Last, on the right side of the pic aboveabove, the headphone on the Dynalo amp being connected by a set (I.e two) 3-pin XLR jacks...was each jack driving one side of each headphone similar to balanced outputs on pre-amp?

 

[tylerchris]

My understanding re: 3pin XLR vs 4pin XLR is that as a headphone output, 2x3pin XLRs used to be more common for balanced headphone cables (and hence why Pavel's Buffalo Dynalo amp has the 2x3pin XLR headphone output). However, recently, this has largely been replaced with 4pin XLR as the preferred headphone output cable (I think the 2x3pin XLR would waste one of the pins anyways, with 1 being used for signal + 1 for ground, and 1 doing nothing. The 4-pin XLR removes the need for this, as you get both L/R and separate grounds for each).
 
In terms of balanced interconnects (ie. between DAC and AMP), the 2x3pin XLR cabling is still the norm (and I think used more because balanced circuitry will typically have separate discrete DACs for each channel, so each has its own 3pin XLR output).
 
As for the Dynalo MK2 picture you showed which has 2 4-pin XLR outputs at the top row, I don't know that amp well, but I think that's just 2 balanced outputs to connect 2 separate headphones via 4pin XLR.
The bottom 2 is a combo output for either 1) 2x3pin XLRs (ie. to accomodate those who have their headphones terminated that way), as well as 2)2 separate 1/4" jacks (ie. you can plug a 1/4 cable into the middle hole).

 

[PeAK]

Thanks for the info and your thoughts on this, Chris.  The thrust of the question is how one would best provide a slightly evolved scheme to the the traditional TRS stereo jack that has been the mainstay of the stereo receivers?  Similar to how speakers are now capable of being bi-wired (or not).
 
I'm in the midst of picking a metal box to house the prototype headamp and want to settle on a sensible set of jacks so that I can support users who have gone to balanced connections. In my single-ended case, the benefit would only be the separated ground returns.
 
My initial thinking would be to
 

• Use one  stereo TRS jack wired in parallel with a 4-pin XLR.  Two of the pins of the  XLR  would be connnected to the chassis ground.  
• Use two combo (XLR/TRS) 3-pin jacks using one of the balanced pins (Pin 3)  as a ground return versus normal negative polarity terminal which does not exist for single-ended. A switch would reconfigure one of the combo jacks so that the it would behave properly  with quarter inch stereo TRS plug. 

 
 

 
Providing all three choices would be a bit much, I feel.
 
I am not opposed to using adapters. Perhaps a Stereo TRS to 2x 3-pin female XLR wired adapter and a Stereo TRS to 4-pin XLR are all we need to provide connectivity with a slight loss in aesthetics.  I sense there is room for some sort of patent waiting to be discovered for someone who can do all of this elegantly and automagically without switches.