IC: Ontario, Quebec, Eastern Canada and Northern US meet! In Montreal!
Jan 12, 2009 at 3:49 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 49

papomaster

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Seems like the Montreal-Quebec-Toronto region head-fi scene has been quite silent for some time. The last two meets we had in the Montreal area were great, but quite rubbishly executed (eh, can't complain, I organized one!) in small and inefficient rooms. Still, we managed to get good equipment*, and even more important, good spirit throughout both meets.

I think it's time to organize something big this year : a full Montreal-Quebec-Toronto-anywhere in between meet! In Montreal, of course, but we could plan some accommodation for, hum, foreign headfiers.
Of course, this is open for everyone who wants to come, which makes even more important for us to settle on a precise date to do it.
To make it valuable for outsiders to come, I thought we could plan it over two days, either during the spring break or at the end of classes, at the end of may.

When organizing the last meets, we found out some good places to rent for a bigger crowd, like the Cegep Maisonneuve who rented classrooms for 60$ a day, or amphitheaters for a bit more than 100$, so we could have one or two (one for closed phones and open discussing, and one for open phones). It's easily accessible from downtown, too. If there are people who have experience renting hotel rooms or meeting rooms for meets, we can go that route as well.

Let us know what you think about that.


* At the first meet, we had Stax Gammas, O2s, Hd650 Balanced, D5000, AD2000, Sr-100 with HP1000 drivers, MPX3, KGSS, SOHA, HB1, Little Dot II+, Nuforce Icon, Shanling T-1000se, Audio Research CD3, Esound E3, Apogee duet, and more than 2k of cables. At the second meet, for 4 people, we had Stax Omega 2 x 2, Koss ESP950 ,Grado SR-100 hot-rodded, Ath-Ad2000, Koss ESP9, Etymotic ER-4p, Sennheiser E60, Stax transfo box, Stax 007t, Soha, ASL HB1, Quad ESL57, Quad 12l2, Cambridge 840A, Nakamichi preamp, Quad II Monoblocks, Apogee Duet, Shanling T-1000se, PS1, Creative Zen Vision M, Thorens TD160 + Cambridge 540p.
 
Jan 15, 2009 at 7:10 AM Post #5 of 49
I would be up for it, I would suggest that headfiers from various location see if they can car pool up.


B
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Jan 15, 2009 at 11:03 PM Post #7 of 49
Papomaster, perhaps you should rename the thread "Eastern Canada meet" or something like that, it would give more visibility to this thread than the actual title.
 
Jan 16, 2009 at 12:27 AM Post #8 of 49
Done, and I changed the opening post to include other cities. I think the meet should be open to the most people possible, as it gives us a bigger run for the money and hassle to organize it!
 
Jan 16, 2009 at 10:02 PM Post #9 of 49
Quote:

Originally Posted by Killercrush /img/forum/go_quote.gif
We need a lot more interest than usual so that the organisation would be worth the effort. Count me in!

We should contact Sennheiser for a HD800 sample if things gets really serious!



Moi j'en ai une paire de commandé ... j'ai bien hâte d'entendre ca.

Faut être patient car c'est 4-8 semaines avant que ca entre. C'est fait à la main et beaucoup de gens ont déjà passé la commande.
 
Jan 16, 2009 at 10:41 PM Post #10 of 49
For what ever it's worth, I would be interested in such a meet. I would be happy to bring what I have which, at the moment, is a K701 and a to-be-built Beta22, the three-channel unbalanced parts for which have just come. And, if I'm lucky, a Buffalo DAC.
 
Jan 17, 2009 at 3:25 AM Post #12 of 49
Quote:

Originally Posted by pompon /img/forum/go_quote.gif
3 channels ? What is the goal to have 3 channels ? 2 I understand ... 7 is for home cinema .. but 3 ... ??


A 2 channels Beta22 has a passive ground and a 3 channels one has an additional board which represents the active ground as the third channel. I really don't know what are the benefits of such a thing but I guess it makes the amp more stable.
 
Jan 17, 2009 at 4:27 AM Post #13 of 49
I'm interested - of course TO is much easier for me to get to :p, but I could head up to Ottawa or Montreal. Ottawa is probably cheaper in terms of hotel, and is kinda in the middle.
 
Jan 17, 2009 at 5:51 AM Post #14 of 49
Quote:

Originally Posted by Killercrush /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I really don't know what are the benefits of such a thing but I guess it makes the amp more stable.


From the designer's web-page on the Beta22 (under Tech Highlights):

Quote:

3-channel "active ground" amplifier (3 β22 boards required)

This is the recommended configuration for standard 3-wire headphones, and offers improved performance by having an active ground channel amplifier for the headphone's shared "ground return" wire. The ground channel amplifier sources or sinks the return current from the transducers, which would otherwise have been dumped into signal ground or power supply ground. This shifts responsibility for the high current reactive load of the headphones from signal ground to the tightly regulated power supply rails, thus removing the primary source of signal ground contamination. The headphone transducer "sees" symmetrical output buffers with equal impedance and transfer characteristics on both sides, rather than an amplifier on one side and a capacitor bank of the power supply ground on the other. This results in lower output impedance, greater linearity and reduced stereo crosstalk. [Emphasis my own.]


In effect, this gives almost all of the benefits of a balanced configuration, so far as I can tell. I would love to have some experimental data comparing the two (voltage- impedance-wise, mostly) but will have to settle for hearsay until then.
wink.gif
 
Jan 19, 2009 at 11:12 AM Post #15 of 49
Quote:

Originally Posted by gp_hebert /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Papomaster, perhaps you should rename the thread "Eastern Canada meet" or something like that, it would give more visibility to this thread than the actual title.


That's actually kind of confusing, I heard about an "Eastern Canada" meet elsewhere and thought they were talking about an actual meet in Eastern Canada, you know, those provinces on the east coast? New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland... :p
 

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