[Ferrari]

Quote:

Originally Posted by apatN /img/forum/go_quote.gif ... So what is exactly a Dynamite?

A balanced Dynahi.

 

[apatN]

Ah I see. Thanks.

 

[compuryan]

sigh. george? ok i guess i look a little like him.

 

[Absorbine_Sr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by compuryan /img/forum/go_quote.gif sigh. george? ok i guess i look a little like him.

Not too much, to my thinking.


So as usual, I did a lot of talking and a little bit of listening. I think I was most impressed by Ryan's Beta driving my HD600's. Being fed by the DAC1, I will admit I was underwhelmed. It was hard to tell just how good the amp was. But once we switched to the Opus 21 for the source, it was easy to see it was an excellent pairing. And balanced out to the 600's sounded very sweet. As I told Ryan, I could live with that combo very easily. I'll not be giving up my Zana anytime soon but that was a solid state amp that could make me very happy indeed.

I gave a short listen to the Dynamite as well. Very good sounding and a very good build by digger. Clean excellent presentation and made the Denon's I listened with (7000's and 2000's I believe) sound very good.

I also spent some time listening to nbourbaki's Pico to see if I should replace the TTVJ Portable Millett I use for my work setup. It's a very good amp, but I didn't hear anything to make me give up my little Millett. Hell, it doesn't even ring when you tap it!

Beyond that it was great talking all things headphone and othertopics as well. Thanks again to bperboy for setting it up. And I do enjoy schlepping my gear around to meets. It's cool to see the faces behind the names here at Head-Fi, and to share the sounds.

A_Sr.

 

[chobint]

Yep Ferrari hit it right on the head. The crazy looking stuff is my Bijou and Twisted Pear Buffalo DAC.

And ya I was hauling a** home HC.

Time to give my 2c i suppose.

I was hoping to get some perspective on DIY vs Storebought tube amps, so I spent the majority of my time comparing the Zana Deux to the Bijou, both with the Buffalo as a DAC. I didn't think either one really differed drastically. But I made mention of a few subtle things I noticed to Absorbine_Sr, the owner of the Zana. I told him I thought the Zana was a bit tighter on the bottom end and more forgiving on poor recordings. I thought the Bijou was a touch sweeter thru the bottom and mids, and actually felt the Bijou was a little more ruthless on the poorly recorded Californication album (something that seemed more prevailant after changing to all film output caps). So what does that mean? I donno, like I said the changes seemed very subtle to me. To me I guess it means Bijou owners shouldn't sell their Bijou to go buy a Zana. Conversely, someone on the waiting list for the Zana shouldn't cut bait and build a Bijou either. So am I glad I spent less building my Bijou? Well yeah, but its my baby so I'm biased... But to the great credit of the Zana, it is fairly well stuffed with HQ parts for a proprietary product. We cracked it open briefly, and the innards were chock full o' big film caps and chokes.

I was VERY impressed with the casework on Digger's Dynamite. This was only his first full build, and it looks like he's been doing this for 20 years. Unfortunately there were still a few noise issues at the meet. That said, I look forward most to hearing the finished and perfected Dynamite at the next meet.

I only took a short listen to Ryan's B22. Unfortunately we also didn't have the correct interconnects to hook my Buffalo up to it balanced, so I couldn't really give it a fair listen. I'll also look forward to listening to this in more detail at the next meet.

I also didn't get to take a listen to David(happycamper)'s Single Power Platinum, which I had hoped to throw into the tube vs tube lineup. I will also look forward to listening to this in the future if I can ever manage to get my dumb arse to a meet on time. Columbus! I won't be late for that one.

My apologies for not hardly getting to at least explore all the gear at the meet. I felt like I only got a chance to converse with half the crowd there. Next time!

Anyway, many thanks to Evan(Bperboy) for organizing the meet. It was a great time.

edit: Wow I used the word "also" a lot.

 

[Aimless1]

The meet looks like it was alot of fun with great gear and head-fiers all round.

Absorbine_Sr should get a custom title as head-fi ambassador. Well done Mike! Hope to see you again at another meet

.

 

[Happy Camper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aimless1 /img/forum/go_quote.gif The meet looks like it was alot of fun with great gear and head-fiers all round. Absorbine_Sr should get a custom title as head-fi ambassador. Well done Mike! Hope to see you again at another meet .

Looks like a grass roots movement. I'd second.

 

[bperboy]

Sorry for the delay in impressions; I posted pictures and then kind of forgot about a write-up. Mondays aren't too good for me

.

Headphone Impressions
I did a few comparisons of different phones against my AKG K702. I started off with the Denon AH-D2000; I found that the bass was much much more present than in my K702, but I also deemed the mids and highs of my K702 to be a more accurate representation of acoustic instrumentation, particularly the saxophone in Joe McQueen's What a Difference a Day Makes. I also did a comparison with the Denon AH-D7000, and I found that the same applied for this higher-end Denon phone as for the AH-D2000. I never did any direct comparison of the D2000 and D7000, so I couldn't comment on their particular differences. My final comparison was between the K702 and Audio-Technica ATH-W5000. I had much the same opinion of these as of the D2000, but I felt like the timbre of the instruments I was hearing were not portrayed particularly accurately. If I had to choose off of the short audition I had, I'd probably choose the D2000 over the W5000.

Amp Impressions
Sadly, I didn't get around to doing any serious comparisons of others' amplifiers. In fact, I don't think I actually listened to any amp but my own MiniMAX. I was far too busy meeting the great Head-Fi'ers and doing some headphone and source comparisons.

Source Impressions
I did do a comparison of my BantamCableDAC and schalliol's Cambridge Audio DacMagic, and I found a significant difference between the two. Honestly, I wasn't really expecting to hear much of difference; I've never really thought individual components could make a drastic change in the sound. However, even after volume matching the two different sources, the DacMagic clearly had more depth to the music; it was clearly a fuller and more satisfying sound than the BantamCableDAC. I couldn't really describe it any other way, but nbourbaki also made the same comparison and had the same conclusion as I did. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could discern between different sources. I also did a short demo between the DacMagic and digger945's y1 DAC. I had one up until about two weeks ago, when mine decided to fail, but I will have another one in a few days (as soon as I finish building it

). The differences between the two were much less pronounced as between the Bantam; this gives me high hopes, because I'd place the y1 on the same or near the same performance level as the Cambridge Audio unit.

People Impressions
I had a great time organizing this meet; I'm really pleased at the turn-out we had, and I'm definitely looking forward to doing other meets in the area (Indy and Columbus are two that need to happen this calendar year). Nbourbaki, I'm glad the travel plans allowed you to make it out to this event; I had a great time doing some headphone and source comparisons with you on my rig. Digger945, wow, that casework on the Dynamite is fantastic; much better than any I've ever done. CompuRyan, that note about the Indy meet was directed towards you

; it was nice to meet another DIY'er in my age group... the B22 looked fantastic, even though I never got around to demo'ing it

. Schalliol and XJDave, thanks for coming out; I really enjoyed the comparison of the Cambridge DAC, and just talking about head-fi stuff. XJDave, sorry about your wallet... I foresee that it's going to take a hit in the near future!

To everyone else who I didn't mention, thanks again for coming out, and I hope it was worth the drive.

 

[bperboy]

Yay, I now have a working y1 DAC again... only a few days too late

 

[xjdave]

Glad to hear you got it working again. Thanks again for hosting, and to everyone who let me listen to their stuff! My wallet is going to be on E for a while... parts parts parts!

-Dave