Sunday was the nicest day for weather we've had around here in a month, and despite this we had between three dozen and forty people (outside of HeadRoom staff, ASM admin, Pavek staff, and yours truly) show up to spend the afternoon inside communing with cool headphone gear and each other in the Pavek Museum "Temple of the Tubes". Tyll and his posse showed up forty minutes after their 1100hr ETA and then spent most of half an hour walking the Pavek with their mouths open. The Pavek is a shrine to broadcast and recording technology from the golden age of radio through, let's say, the early 60s. Literally
thousands of old radios and other pieces of electronic gear from when the transistor was not even a twinkle in the eye of some guy from Western Electric. Bing Cosby's original tape recorder, playing full track mono at over 30ips through monstrous antique double horn theater speakers sets the tone; did I mention most of this stuff is operative and ready to go? Kind of like an electronic participatory version of the old Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago on steroids. I was pretty sure the Pavek was where we wanted to be when I first saw it four months ago.
Since this was my first
real meet (sorry, Tyll
), I have no points for comparison; but that's never stopped me yet.
It's fair to say individual curiosity did away with polite self-control within the first twenty minutes. Soon an orgy of age regressed males were stomping between stations, switching first headphones, then amps, then sources, then cables, now interconnects (and, of course, CDs) to fully investigate what all this neat stuff might mean to their individual applications. It's a wonder everything eventually got back in order and not broken or lost, but such was the case and I commend all participants for that.
I had a lot of fun watching Henry, current ASM president and an area cardiologist, falling deeply into the abyss of headphone upgraditis. Henry came with a pair of stock cabled HD600s and that little tube amp you see on the left side of my rig in the pictures above. We sourced Henry's amp with NordOst ribbons from the second output of my Arcam FMJ 21T and it was off to the races. Henry was particularly interested in dealing with some playback anomolies he was running into with old Miles Davis horn recordings, so his remaster of
Sketches of Spain became thre grail. He asked what I would recommend, and I told him I would first be thinking about recabling the HD600s with a Zu Mobius and then thinking about HD650s. Henry spent the rest of the afternoon confirming this with my Cardas cables, Zu Mobius, and HD650s. His eyes kept burning brighter and his pals from ASM, who know him for his soft spoken self restraint, were really knocking themselves out. Then, Henry checked out the entire new HeadRoom line through Zu-ed HD650s. Sorry about your wallet, Henry.
Around us, the other meet participants continued to age regress precipitously. I was happy to see the number of people who brought their own sample CDs and headphones and were making efforts to limit the other system and software variables as they ran down their next system "improvements". All were impressed with the new HeadRoom amps and the way they had been put before us for comparison. Folks who know Tyll and HeadRooms design and sound philosophy were not disappointed in the incremental improvements towards natural, neutral, liquid sound in solid state equipment with a sensible range of adjustments and improved design and technology. The HeadRoom amps in the new line have clear focus in application and, while they may constitute no reason to necessarily throw over a present amp you are pleased with, do constitute the place to go for an improvement when the time comes, IMHO.
The meet ended too quickly, and by 1640hrs we had packed up Tyll, Jamey, and Joe (ie. got out of their way while they packed up) and got them aimed at the highway. Cheerful trio of high energy guys just doing the work of the Lord. If one of the future dates is anywhere near you, you just gotta go and check it out. It is impossible to tell you just how much you will learn and what a great time you will have. I'm already talking with ASM and the Pavek about making a headphone meet a regular feature of ASM's ten event annual calendar. While we may well be seeing ASM members coming into Head-Fi, to a man they declined my offer to help select their new user names.