It was great getting so see all the old faces again, and also getting to meet the new folks.
One of the stars of the show was the LCD-2. Now i knew i loved this phone ahead of time, after hearing it for quite a while at canjam. but its just as good as i remembered it being. Here i got to try it on more amps than i did at canjam though. I tried it on my little Audio GD sparrow first, which actually powered it better than i thought it would, i was about halfway on the volume, and since it was the first thing i was listening to it on, it sounded pretty good, lacking a bit in the deepest bass and not as effortless as it could have sounded, but still very good. then i moved over to Duke's rig with it, listening through his old monarchy dac and his custom tube amp, and holy cow, its like the sound stage just blew open. everything i listened to expanded around me so much better than on my little sparrow. I really think it was the amp, Duke's new tube amp is pretty much amazing. It was certainly the best amp i heard the LCD-2's on at the meet, though David's SP Extreme did a pretty good job as well.
Speaking of duke's amp, it was pretty much amazing. first thing i listened to on it was my JH-13's. After only listening to the Audio GD sparrow for the last 3 or 4 months now, going to something this high end again was kind of startling. There was so much more air and space between instruments, larger soundstage. the only problem with using the JH-13's with it though, was i think there was a bit of a impedance mismatch, and so there was some bass roll off with the 13's, so while it was a great amp, i still wouldnt recommend it for iem's. But as i stated above it was wonderful with the LCD-2's. My only small gripe with the amp was that it used two separate mono attenuators rather that a single 2 gang pot.
The other star of the show was the REF-7. i didnt get to listen to it before the DSP upgrade, but afterwards, it was brilliant. this dac did everything great. Deeeeeeep bass, paired with the LCD-2's the bass was freaking unreal. the soundstage was collosal. And physically the dac is ginormous, its huge, and weighs about two tons. then you take the lid off, and you can really see what your paying for, this thing is packed with components, its electronics porn at its best, a thing of symmetrical beauty. When we finally paired it with Duke's amp, it lit up the LCD-2's like something else. I really wanted to try my JH-13's with the REF-7, but i didnt get a chance to, though im sure it wouldnt have dissappointed me at all. overall its the best dac ive ever heard and if i werent getting the JH-3A's, which means i dont need a dac or amp, i would get be getting one for sure.
There was another amp from a company called DB labs. the designer came with his two kids to show us the dac. it was a NOS design and it only took USB input that wasnt asynch as far as i could tell. the designer, i dont remember his name, certainly talked it up quite a bit. i walked over to the table where it was hooked up to david's SP extreme, and he said to me that i had to hear his dac that it was "helacious", i took this with a grain of salt as his tiny little silver box sat atop the monolithic REF-7 and i plugged in my macbook and the LCD-2's to give it a listen. It did nothing but disappoint. it had no deep bass, the soundstaging didnt impress either. at first i wasnt sure whether these problems were the SP extreme, cause it was the first time id heard the LCD-2's on the amp, but all of the problems disappeared when we plugged the SP extreme into the REF-7 so thats when i knew that it was the dac that wasnt good, not david's amp.
One thing i got to listen to that i wasnt expecting to see there was the iQube portable amp, chris(i dont remember his forum name) brought his with him, and i took the chance to plug it into my iPhone with my whiplash LOD and plugged in my JH-13's. The amp was very impressive, it didnt hiss like most portable amps that ive heard. At even the lowest volume level there was a ever so slight hiss, that wasnt realy a hiss, but its volume didnt change no matter what volume i set the amp too, there wasnt the gradual increase in hiss as the volume went up, and the ever so slight hiss that was there, didnt bother me at all. This amp has bass! authoritative, deep, very well textured. Maybe not quite up to par with the protector in balanced mode, but very impressive nonetheless. i liked it much better than the pico slim with my 13's. i know its kind of moot that i listened to it since i plan on getting the 3A's and wont need an amp, but it was a portable that i had always been curious about.
It was also great getting to chat with everyone, meeting new people. Duke brought along a friend of his, that was a huge source of knowledge chatting about speaker rigs, and i cant wait to get the chance to head back down to cincy and check out his system. even got to chat about books for a while with david which was cool. and everyone making fun of my choice in music, and even getting some of them older guys to check out some DragonForce!! which is fast but fairly innocuous as far as metal goes considering the singing style. though Duke was convinced that the drummer couldnt actually play that fast, though i repeatedly assured him that he could. and i feel like i hogged the pictures there Duke, im more of them than anyone else!
Also a HUGE!!! thank you to emelius for letting us borrow your LCD-2's, it was a great pleasure to get to listen to them again.
i cant wait for the next one guys!!
and tom, one thing i was hoping to be able to do at the meet was try the modded hiface on my laptop, but never got around to it, if some weekend you wouldnt mind getting together so i can check it out with my crazy music and rig id be greatly appreciative
