Theogenes
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Mar 28, 2010
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Welcome to the Third Edition of the Music City Meet in Spring 2015!!
This is the Official Thread for the third incarnation of Music City Meet™ in (or around) Nashville, TN-- welcome!!The Basics:
- The event will be held on April 18th, 2015 from 10am until 7pm
- The venue will be the conference room at the Best Western in Spring Hill, TN
- The address is 104 Kedron Pkwy, Spring Hill, Tennessee, 37174
Venue Pics:
(Yes, I realize I'm not going to be threatening Ansel Adams any time soon with my photography skills. Just accept it and move along.)
To get an idea of what to expect, please feel free to check out the threads from our previous meets:
Music City Meet Official Thread - Spring 2014
Music City Meet Pictures & Impressions Thread - Spring 2014
Music City Meet - Fall 2014
Music City Meet Pictures & Impressions Thread - Fall 2014
The Pictures & Impressions thread from the last meet was the defacto thread to discuss the upcoming thread until we got the location nailed down, but the thread was (inexplicably) locked, so we'll just chat here instead!
Frequently/Never Asked Questions:
Who Is Welcome?
Anybody!
How Much Does It Cost?
Not a thing. Just show up, be friendly, and bring gear if you have some to share!
What Can I Bring?
Besides a love of good music well reproduced and a friendly demeanor, you don't need to bring anything at all! If you have some personal audio gear that others might like to hear, though, we would love it if you'd bring yours down (as that's one of the key elements to making the meet great for everyone)! Let me know what you decide to bring by posting below. If something changes, no worries-- just post in the thread and I'll try to keep the gear lists updated so people have some idea what's going to be present to check out.
I Don't Have Any Cool Headphone Gear, Can I Bring Something Else to Help Out?
Sure! We can always use extension cables and power strips, and the more the better-- we'll have almost twice as many power outlets (16!) as we did for the first two meets, but as always, we really can't have enough of both! We ended up lining tables along the walls last time and had few enough attendees for it to work with the strips and extensions we had, but if we have a significant increase in attendees this time, we'll definitely need more. Basically, if you have 'em, bring 'em!!
Also, if there are any shutterbugs among the group (like Eric was in May and September) who are kind enough to bring along cameras and share their pictures with everyone, that would be greatly appreciated!! Because if there's anything that's almost as great as awesome headphones, it's awesome headphone pictures-- a fact which has been scientifically proven for decades. Don't look it up, just trust me here.What About the Eats??
Unfortunately, we won't be able to provide snacks or food for everyone. However, there is a Frankie's Pizza and Grill that is about 15 feet from the hotel, and a ton of chain restaurants about 2 miles down the road. The owner of the venue is fine with individuals bringing food for themselves and eating it on premise, we just can't bring food for everyone. We'll probably have a table (away from all the gear) where people can sit down and enjoy their food and drinks. One note: I love beer more than anybody, but we have agreed that there will be no alcohol on the premises, so if you need a couple swigs to calm the shakes, take 'em before you come by
.Are There Any Additional Festivities?
I'm open to meeting up for dinner and drinks the night before or after the meet (or both, maybe) with interested parties. If you're interested, let me know!!
Will There Be Any Vendors There?
At this point, who knows? (Update: a lot!! Check the second post below!) I'm going to reach out to a few, including several that wanted to attend the last one but weren't able to due to some issues with the previous organizer. As I get vendors on board, I'll post the updates here, so stay tuned!!
What Awesome Gear Will Be Present For Me to Check Out?
That depends on what awesome gear you bring! I'll keep a running tally of who's bringing what in the second post, so if you are just dying to hear the new KochleaKrusher 4000, you can see if someone plans on bringing one down to share. I can say that last time we had some pretty stellar gear available (see the links from the Impressions threads above), and I think everybody got to hear a lot of stuff that was new and interesting to them. Just don't bring your next mortgage payment with you when you come-- you might be hopping on websites and buying stuff before you know what happened. Which would be Sad Mac.
Do I Need to Let You Guys Know I'm Coming?
Technically, no-- you can just show up! However, I'd like to have an idea of how many people are coming, and what gear they're bringing, so that I can make sure I keep the logistics of this sucker under control. Should we have too many people show up and not enough chairs, for example, we might have packs of stiff-legged audiophiles roaming the hapless streets of Spring Hill... which would definitely be bad news bears.
So When Is This Whole Soiree Going to Be Happening?
We'll have the room booked for the whole day, but the 'official' hours are 10am through 7pm. If 7pm rolls around and everybody is still feelin' froggy, we might even extend it a while
.Other Thoughts:
Gear to Sell: If you have some gear you'd like to sell and plan on bringing, let me know and I'll make a note that it's for sale in the gear listings. This seems to be popular in some of the big meets in the Northeast I've read up on, and I don't see why we couldn't do the same thing. Plus, if Jay attends, there's a distinct possibility he would buy every single headphone in attendance and resell them before leaving, and that's a spectacle I couldn't possibly bear missing. (Hugs, Jay!!
IEM Section: I'm thinking it would be interesting to have a separate table or area for IEMs and portable equipment in general. After speaking with Zach at Aurisonics before the last meet, I picked up a bunch of alcohol wipes that can be used to generally clean/sterilize IEM tips. There weren't a lot of people who tried IEMs other than the Aurisonics stuff that was there (which were excellent, btw), but I'll have the wipes here again. Pro Tip: if you plan on listening to a particular set of IEMs somebody mentions bringing, it would be wise to order a set of tips for that IEM in your size prior to the meet, so you can listen to it precisely as you'd hear it with your own two ear-holes-- and you get the bonus of avoiding sharing ear-related heebie jeebies with somebody!! Win-Win FTW!!
Vendors to Invite: I'm already planning on reaching out to Zach at ZMF (of course), Justin at HeadAmp, Dale at Aurisonics, and a few others. Who else would you like to see here? If you have any contacts or compromising photographs that could compel a manufacturer with great gear to attend, please let me know!
Your Thoughts/Ideas: After attending a grand total of five headphone meets in my life (including the ones I set up), I'm willing to concede that there are probably a significant number of great ideas out there I haven't stumbled across yet. Got a great idea? Holla at me!! I'm sure we won't be able to do every awesome thing anyone thinks of, but I'm definitely very interested in making this as great an experience as humanly possible for everyone involved, so don't be bashful-- this is the internet, after all! I'm going to dig through a few other threads for good ideas too, and if I find anything brilliant I'll bring it back for the trial by groupthink.
Standard Demo Tracks: One thing I thought of after attending the last meet was how nice it might be if there was a standard album (or track list) of 10-20 songs that were loaded in the same format, bitrate, etc on each setup at the meet. This might make it easier to compare multiple setups, but it also might be a pain in the mule. Whaddya think, is this worth doing? And if so, what tracks should we shoot for having everyone use? (No flame wars here, please-- no matter how much you feel the need to convince everyone that Bieber really is the Mozart of our generation).
UPDATE: Okay, so we've decided on The Ultimate Headphone Demonstration Disc from Chesky Records. You can get 20% off by using the code UHDD20 as a Head-Fi member! You aren't required to get this, by any means-- it's just an attempt to make your comparative experience more valuable by providing a common ground for many of us to use when evaluating different gear. Also, you're a dork if you don't get it. (Just kidding. Dorkiness seems to come for free with each download on this one...)
Signature Line Advertising: Since few people seem to come to the meet threads, it would be great if those who know about the meet could get the word out to others who might be interested in attending. Besides the normal methods of doing so (posting in boards, sending PMs to members in the area, showing up unannounced at the homes of various members), a few of us did links in our signature lines to let people know about the last one. A few examples might be:
- See You in Nashville at the Music City Meet on April 18th!
- Awesomeness Embodied: A Deconstructive Analysis of the Subtextual Interstices at the Music City Meet in Nashville, April 18th.
- Where I'll Be On April 18th -- Wanna Come?
- Putting the "Music" Back In the Music City -- April 18th, 2015!!
Feel free to copy any of these and put 'em in your signature line-- we don't want anybody who would enjoy this to miss it, and you might help somebody find out about it!
Pre-Meet Dinner: In what is becoming a Music City Meet tradition, a few of us will be getting together the night before the meet (Friday, April 17th) for dinner and good conversation. Feel free to join us!!
Dinner Info:
Cool Springs Brewery (http://www.coolspringsbrewery.com)
600A Frazier Drive No.135 Franklin, TN 37067
(615) 503.9626
Time: 6:00pm
Closing Thoughts:
I can honestly say I've learned more about my own tastes in gear and how I wanted to set up my system from meets than all the reading I've done on the internet-- and that's a lot of reading on the internet. If you've never been to a meet before, GO TO A MEET!! We'd love to have you at ours, but even if you can't come to this one, getting to any meet would definitely be worth your time. And if you're an old hat at these meets by now, why, where have you been while Nashville has needed a meet all these years?? Why am I stuck doing this???
Seriously, these meets succeed or fail based on the quality of the people and the gear that show up. I genuinely look forward to seeing the guys from the last meet and meeting some new people at this one!! SEE YOU IN NASHVILLE!!!!
