It was a great meet. I think it has to be said, though, attendance was mediocre this year. A lot of people didn't show up, and not just the people who were sick. Of course, who am I to talk, being the person who literally missed the meet last year because I wasn't paying attention.
I would say we had some of the best setups at this meet that I've heard in a long time. I don't know if I've ever been able to walk up to 10 rigs and even tolerate 5 of them, never mind actually really enjoying 5 of them. I'm not sure whether it was the large number of people running quality audio files on good DACs or the fact that every other station had an HD800, but there were a lot of good rigs at the meet.
The Lampizator with the monoblocks and the HE-6 really surprised me. I don't remember falling in love with the HE-6 the first time I heard it, but this rig definitely had some real "synergy" going on. It sounded great, one of my top rigs at the meet, although I have to say that dropping that kind of money on a DAC is not what I would do.
The Abyss was nuts. I know some people didn't like it, but I think it has real potential. It was obvious to me that I'd need to spend a few hours with it tweaking it to really get it to fit properly, because it didn't, but it definitely had some crazy detail going on in the mids and highs that really surprised me. In particular, I felt vocal reproduction was off-the-charts good. Adding more bass would make it very good indeed. I'll be interested in hearing the production version when it comes out.
I hope everyone made it over to ESL-1's table at some point because that guy had a real nice smorgasbord of stuff to listen to. I liked his Stax setup the best myself.
I got to compare the LCD-X and the LCD-3's on Frank's rig, that was great. I was amazed at many of the similarities. These Audeze have a "house" sound that transfers from unit to unit like Grados do. The bass is a lot heavier on the LCD-X's. Even a DT770 fan would be happy with these! Also as a side note, the number of orthos I see has really picked up.
This was my first time hearing the HD700 at this meet (I know, I'm really out of the loop!). The construction quality seemed excellent, and I loved that they felt light, durable, and fit perfectly with little "fidgeting" required. With regards to the sound, I was very disappointed. I really think the HD600 is a better sounding phone.
Oh, and if anyone was wondering what happened to my vinyl rig, the cart was out of alignment and causing distortion, so I will bring that setup back at the next meet because I didn't have anything with me to realign it.
As always, thanks to bozebuttons for organizing the meet!