I made the rounds today and snapped a few pix, but not as many as I should have. I did a quick upload and noticed my
cheap camera lost it's date. Oh well...
The LCD-2 & Cavalli "Liquid Fire" Combo: My favorite listen of everything non-Stax I heard at the meet. The Cavalli matched the LCD-2 better than the Woo WA6 next to it, I was impressed with the build quality on the L.F. prototype as well as the sound.
The LCD-2 has exceptional tone from top to bottom. The soundstage was crisp, but fairly small. Not quite Stax clarity, but close. The build was very nice and proffesional. The downside was the ergonomics; the cable is stiffer and more microphonic than it should be, the jacks hang below the cups enough to be a slight nuisance and it's pretty heavy. All in all it's a winner though, and on my list.
Thunderpants on a very clean DynaMite build, with Nikongod's "Silver Ghost" amp in the background.
I love the DynaMite sound and it went well with the thunderpants. From a brief listen, it had the ortho sound tuned pretty well. Not at the LCD-2 level but close. One of the nicest sounding personal setups at the meet. The TP build quality was exceptional.
I finally got to hear a Stacker, but not with any headphones I'm familiar with. It had the Cavalli "sound", but that's about all the judgement I could make at the meet. I got a chance to talk with Alex about the Stacker and it doesn't seem very likely my wish of getting to build one will happen
. The build of this Stacker surely was impressive.
Kevin Gilmore's T2. This was the most impressive piece of hardware at the meet for a DIY geek. Wow...just wow.
It sang like a bird too. If I didn't have a BHSE on order I would start emailing KG, begging to be let on the DIY list.
I might start emailing anyway ...
Besides the comments with pix, I heard some stuff I liked and some I can scratch off the wish list.
Beyer T1 - Nice phones and I can hear what the hype is about, sort of. But they aren't for me. They didn't
clearly beat their natural competitor, the HD800, in any area and they were pretty convincingly beat by the HD800's
soundstage and air. So I saved some money I was going to spend.
Jade Electrostats - I heard them on the Woo WES and the Woo energizer driven by a WA5. I've been intrigued by what I've
read about the Jade and it was great to get a chance to listen. They sounded almost like they were in the Stax family, but not quite.
They have a sense of color that none of the Stax I've heard have. After a brief time with them I still don't know whether I'm considering them
or not. The Woo amps were far more impressive to me than I would have imagined. Both the WES and the WA5 are awesome. I didn't
think I generally like the 300b sound, but the WA5 was particularly impressive. I'm not in the market for an amp, but if I was I'd put Woo
on the short list.
