Apologies on the file dump, as the 5 hours there went by quick with so much gear and so many people to catch up with. I just didn't take enough notes on each but just based out of memory. These setups are not "ranked" in anyway, just in the order in which they came out from my phone.
This is a great setup.Enleum AMP-23R, fed by a Sony DAT player. I used it to power my Grado HP-1000 and it sounds as good I ever recalled. It balances out the headphone and the PRAT was excellent, high level of coherence in the music and just musical, overall. I can't afford it though .... as is the case with so much of the gear here.
In typical head-fi meet protocol, gear was just strewn around everywhere so I am not sure if some of these gear belongs to the same table. I always thought it is at least mildly amusing that expensive gear is just set up everywhere and nobody bats an eye when someone walks around with a $4000 earphone .... That said, my attempt to pull my impressions of these earphones.
Hifiman RE-00. These sound amazing for the price. I think they are about $75 or so and they are just amazing at that price. The bass is well resolved and there is an amazing amount of detail in these.
I believe these are the moon drops. I love how they look, not the biggest fan of the sound signature as I found the upper mids to have this metallic tinge to it, but perhaps I was just spoiled because I just finished listening to the Fitear TG-334 before I tried these on.
The Darkvoice, one legendary amp. They are still good after so many years and I just can't get over how beautiful it looks. If I ever get a tube headphone amp, this is the one.
Westone W40. I actually started my headphone journeys with the Westone W30, way back in the day (Well, technically my first "hi-end" earphones were the Shure e3c, but those weren't great by any stretch of imagination) so Westones have a special place in my heart. They were exactly what I remembered them, smooth coherence sounds, maybe lacking in details at certain spots, but still overall a great pair of earphones. I still love them.
Big guns doesn't start the describe this.
Mjolnir Audio KGSSHV (??
@NexusOne please chime in to confirm), fed by the RME ADI-2 DAC, and going out the the Stax SR-009. This set up go SO MUCH FREAKING interest, people were just parked at this station. Sounds so good.
You can also see a Fitear case in there, and actually there were TWO. Fitear TG-334 and another model that escaped my memory at this time. The Fitear TG-334 was amazing on certain tracks. I was listening to Broken Social Scene and it just brought out all that mid-beauty of the music, absolutely stunning. That said, these are not the greatest with some types of tracks, I listened to some Prodigy just for fun to see how they sound like and the top just gets cut off too much. The bass though ......
The Sony IER-Z1Rs were in that Sony case, I didn't even have time to try them out and I am kicking myself for it. Wanted to try it so bad. And somewhere in that pile is the AK-SP2000, son of a ......
OK, I have to confess that I don't remember the actual set up of this, but hot damn this is awesome. The Dynamo 34SE MKII sounds great, but it definitely have noise, but using it to feed it to the Stax SRD-7, out to the (I believe) 404s were just so good, just top of the line sound. The Abbas DAC was tubey sounding, perhaps a little too tubey for my taste, but there is another DAC on the right corner that was awesome. Sorry, I forgot make and model, but it's a DAC from the 90s (I think it was an Esoteric) and that is just an incredible DAC. I have always thought that I can't tell the differences between DACs that well, well ... I can.
I didn't have any time to try these headphones, which is a damn shame.
A bunch of us, sitting around enjoying the gear.
Schitt audio. Jeff really liked this set up (his own) paired with my homemade Magnum V4s.
More headphones in a pile ....
My own set up, Hiby R6 --> mytek 192 dsd dac --> Sansui AU-11000a --> Hifiman HE6. I also have the Campfire Audio Andromeda (2019 version I think). I am still happy with this setup, but going to meets are always dangerous as I was not even thinking of upgrading/sidegrading at all, now? I am leaving that window opened.
