Once again, I didn't get to listen to everything I wanted to listen to, but that's fine as I spent most of the time getting to talk to members. Kerry and Ari were particularly helpful in explaining things for my DIY projects. Wavoman was particularly generous in giving me an SRD7. I will now have to make a beautiful electrostatic amp to utilize the jacks or feel horrible.about taking it. Vinnie of Red Wine Audio was very gracious of providing lunch. I particularly liked this because it helped keep the middle of the meet more coherent so there was no need to break from the meet to eat or hold back on eating to enjoy everyone's company and the gear.
I got to meet Jude and Fang for the first time and that was an honor. It still feels odd since I now know how close Fang lives to me. And thankfully immtbiker's HE6 was free so I got a chance to listen to Fang's latest headphones. Driven out of an Luxman with an Oppo source was amazing--that reminds me I need to ask immtbiker for that name of the artist since the CD was so great. I quite liked it a lot and see why it is held in such high esteem. I do wish I had a chance to listen to the HE4 and that I will get a chance to listen to them in a quiet environment sometime--maybe I'll just have to buy both to find out
Doug's LCD2 setup is like the way I had it when I was checking my friend's for any build problems but it had a better source. This is further makes me feel that the LCD2 benefits more from a better source than a better amp (as long as you have something decent to run it, but you do not need to spend thousands for towards that effect).
I do regret not spending enough time with doompigeon's eXstata hybrid and ss with my O2 but I really liked how my SRXmk3 Pro sounded out of them. Once again, doompigeon, your dad did some beautiful wood work on the amps. doompigeon and his father had a wonderful setup and it was fun to talking to them and Andrew about Stax. Stax mafia is everywhere. I also wish I spent some time at the JH booth since I wanted to hear the demos, but my wallet is breathing a large sigh of relief.
Erikzen did a great job organizing everything and Yikes was quick at quieting the room and getting the auction through quickly and efficiently.
Dinner was great and then the small group of us that went to the bar later was very fun--it was great meeting you daveDerek. The talk about audio fell to the background due to politics again but it was a fun conversation.
Overall it was a great meet and I hope the next one is just as great if not better.
EDIT: I mixed up doompigeon and his father. Whoops sorry. Too many names for my small brain to keep up with.