Seattle CAN Meets Genesis Advanced Technology 3/7/20 Impressions

[BIG POPPA]

The turn out was awesome considering some stayed home. They asked for us to do it again with them. The music was great, the people were great. Everyone had a good time.

 

[Muziqboy]

Wow! That meet was really something else. Big thumbs up and congrats to @BIG POPPA for organizing this.
Thanks to Gary at Genesis Advanced Technologies for the hospitality and opening up his shop for us local head-fiers.
I hope more of these collaboration meets will be happening in the future!

Had a good time mingling with the PNW Audio Society. Goes to show the speaker guys and us headphone enthusiast have a lot in common which is great music and the pursuit of good sound reproduction. I heard comments from a lot of people that they never realized how good a headphone system can be and can even rival good speaker systems after they tried the various rigs on display. A couple people even told me that they are definitely gonna be getting into the headphone world.


I had a great time chatting with Dan Teisan of Late September Dogs, a local Seattle area Rock band who was also present at the meet and will be releasing their album Learning to Fall on cd soon which was recorded with an orchestra. He had a vinyl pressing of this album and was played on Gary's turntable/speaker system and it sounded great to me so I'm definitely buying the cd.

Looking at Gil's pics with the crowds above, does that look like a virus-scare to you?
just sayin'

 

[Frankie D]

Can anyone comment on the sound of the Viva headphone amp? I actually use Viva electronics for my home stereo, and have heard their headphone amp is also excellent. I am curious to hear the attendees thoughts. Tks.

 

[BIG POPPA]

After a couple days to chill out and reflect on this last meet. This meet broke a few barriers in the local audio scene. It brought the speaker peeps and the headphone peeps together in a event where you you think we would both stay in our lanes. And with the current hysteria happening with a virus you see on TV. We did take precautions. Handles, surfaces, chairs and gear were sanitized prior to the meet. A few regular attendee's did stay home just in case.
On the headphone gear side of things their was some extra notable gear in attendance. @xtreme4099 brought the Larrocco Headcode Solid State amp and the Holo Audio May DAC, and HEDDphones. @johnjen brought his own 71A Tube amp(designed by JJ and Tristen Jones0 with his perfectly modded, hardwired Senn HD800's, with @Muziqboy rig, his tubes where the cool ones in the pic's, his rigs, BIO is nutz(there is a pic on the 1st post). 4 reclockers and Lipo batteries all over the place to cure ground loop. Hope I get it right.
Then the Viva Audio Egoista 845. If a Headphone amp was ever painted like a Lamborghini, this one is it. Gorgeous amp. Yeah that headphone cable is mine in the pic, ALO audio 18AWG cryo'd copper Senn cable attached to my HD 800's. I was able to listen to it before everyone arrived. Beautiful music was coming out effortless. The HD800's matched very well. Soundstage was big, but not overwhelming. Bass was right, wasn't bloated or light. The mids were just floating in between instruments, wasn't forward or recessed. Just jaw dropping good. The high's were spacious and on point. You listen to this amp with the right cans, you could blink and it would be 5 hours later with this amp. Have a saying, "When I listen to Diana Krall on my rig, she is sitting on my lap singing to me' in this case it is a bit more intimate than that listening to the 845.
Then @dave r rig Rene' Jaeger designed set amp with 5842 and 0D3 tubes. This is a sweet amp dialed in with the senns.
Then I brought my resurrected from the dead Singlepower MPX3. Tristen Jones put a Lundahl power transformer and an edcor choke in it. jj put gold and rodium rca connectors and rhodium IEC . Mytek Brooklyn Dac and Sennheiser HD800's and ALO cable. All my gear is cabled and fused up. A lot of fussing.
My Sonarworks crashed. OMG lost my presets. Had to deal with that. JJ had a break in the 71A amp and what a place to have it in. Gary was so gracious to put John in a soldering station to repair the amp fast and get it back running great again at the meet.
We set up the stations and just left people to themselves to listen to the rigs. We had rig bio's on most of the rigs so people could see what gear they were listening to. Think we are going to keep doing that for future meets.
Did purchase vinyl for the meet. Don't even own a turntable.
A cool thing at this meet, Gary would talk about the music that he was spinning on that 150K turntable. Explaining the difference in vinyl and demonstrating it with one song on 3 different pressings.
Merrill Audio's amps were powering the Genesis Quartets, great sounding amps.
There was so much going on at the Co-hosted meet. We could about every little thing for days.
Can't wait for the next co-hosted meet.

 

[roadcykler]

Looks like a great time, but one question. In the front row, there is a being with long hair that I don't recall seeing at events like these. What is that?

 

[Frankie D]

After a couple days to chill out and reflect on this last meet. This meet broke a few barriers in the local audio scene. It brought the speaker peeps and the headphone peeps together in a event where you you think we would both stay in our lanes. And with the current hysteria happening with a virus you see on TV. We did take precautions. Handles, surfaces, chairs and gear were sanitized prior to the meet. A few regular attendee's did stay home just in case.
On the headphone gear side of things their was some extra notable gear in attendance. @xtreme4099 brought the Larrocco Headcode Solid State amp and the Holo Audio May DAC, and HEDDphones. @johnjen brought his own 71A Tube amp(designed by JJ and Tristen Jones0 with his perfectly modded, hardwired Senn HD800's, with @Muziqboy rig, his tubes where the cool ones in the pic's, his rigs, BIO is nutz(there is a pic on the 1st post). 4 reclockers and Lipo batteries all over the place to cure ground loop. Hope I get it right.
Then the Viva Audio Egoista 845. If a Headphone amp was ever painted like a Lamborghini, this one is it. Gorgeous amp. Yeah that headphone cable is mine in the pic, ALO audio 18AWG cryo'd copper Senn cable attached to my HD 800's. I was able to listen to it before everyone arrived. Beautiful music was coming out effortless. The HD800's matched very well. Soundstage was big, but not overwhelming. Bass was right, wasn't bloated or light. The mids were just floating in between instruments, wasn't forward or recessed. Just jaw dropping good. The high's were spacious and on point. You listen to this amp with the right cans, you could blink and it would be 5 hours later with this amp. Have a saying, "When I listen to Diana Krall on my rig, she is sitting on my lap singing to me' in this case it is a bit more intimate than that listening to the 845.
Then @dave r rig Rene' Jaeger designed set amp with 5842 and 0D3 tubes. This is a sweet amp dialed in with the senns.
Then I brought my resurrected from the dead Singlepower MPX3. Tristen Jones put a Lundahl power transformer and an edcor choke in it. jj put gold and rodium rca connectors and rhodium IEC . Mytek Brooklyn Dac and Sennheiser HD800's and ALO cable. All my gear is cabled and fused up. A lot of fussing.
My Sonarworks crashed. OMG lost my presets. Had to deal with that. JJ had a break in the 71A amp and what a place to have it in. Gary was so gracious to put John in a soldering station to repair the amp fast and get it back running great again at the meet.
We set up the stations and just left people to themselves to listen to the rigs. We had rig bio's on most of the rigs so people could see what gear they were listening to. Think we are going to keep doing that for future meets.
Did purchase vinyl for the meet. Don't even own a turntable.
A cool thing at this meet, Gary would talk about the music that he was spinning on that 150K turntable. Explaining the difference in vinyl and demonstrating it with one song on 3 different pressings.
Merrill Audio's amps were powering the Genesis Quartets, great sounding amps.
There was so much going on at the Co-hosted meet. We could about every little thing for days.
Can't wait for the next co-hosted meet.

Thanks for your impression of the Viva. Tks.

 

[lambdastorm]

After a couple days to chill out and reflect on this last meet. This meet broke a few barriers in the local audio scene. It brought the speaker peeps and the headphone peeps together in a event where you you think we would both stay in our lanes. And with the current hysteria happening with a virus you see on TV. We did take precautions. Handles, surfaces, chairs and gear were sanitized prior to the meet. A few regular attendee's did stay home just in case.
On the headphone gear side of things their was some extra notable gear in attendance. @xtreme4099 brought the Larrocco Headcode Solid State amp and the Holo Audio May DAC, and HEDDphones. @johnjen brought his own 71A Tube amp(designed by JJ and Tristen Jones0 with his perfectly modded, hardwired Senn HD800's, with @Muziqboy rig, his tubes where the cool ones in the pic's, his rigs, BIO is nutz(there is a pic on the 1st post). 4 reclockers and Lipo batteries all over the place to cure ground loop. Hope I get it right.
Then the Viva Audio Egoista 845. If a Headphone amp was ever painted like a Lamborghini, this one is it. Gorgeous amp. Yeah that headphone cable is mine in the pic, ALO audio 18AWG cryo'd copper Senn cable attached to my HD 800's. I was able to listen to it before everyone arrived. Beautiful music was coming out effortless. The HD800's matched very well. Soundstage was big, but not overwhelming. Bass was right, wasn't bloated or light. The mids were just floating in between instruments, wasn't forward or recessed. Just jaw dropping good. The high's were spacious and on point. You listen to this amp with the right cans, you could blink and it would be 5 hours later with this amp. Have a saying, "When I listen to Diana Krall on my rig, she is sitting on my lap singing to me' in this case it is a bit more intimate than that listening to the 845.
Then @dave r rig Rene' Jaeger designed set amp with 5842 and 0D3 tubes. This is a sweet amp dialed in with the senns.
Then I brought my resurrected from the dead Singlepower MPX3. Tristen Jones put a Lundahl power transformer and an edcor choke in it. jj put gold and rodium rca connectors and rhodium IEC . Mytek Brooklyn Dac and Sennheiser HD800's and ALO cable. All my gear is cabled and fused up. A lot of fussing.
My Sonarworks crashed. OMG lost my presets. Had to deal with that. JJ had a break in the 71A amp and what a place to have it in. Gary was so gracious to put John in a soldering station to repair the amp fast and get it back running great again at the meet.
We set up the stations and just left people to themselves to listen to the rigs. We had rig bio's on most of the rigs so people could see what gear they were listening to. Think we are going to keep doing that for future meets.
Did purchase vinyl for the meet. Don't even own a turntable.
A cool thing at this meet, Gary would talk about the music that he was spinning on that 150K turntable. Explaining the difference in vinyl and demonstrating it with one song on 3 different pressings.
Merrill Audio's amps were powering the Genesis Quartets, great sounding amps.
There was so much going on at the Co-hosted meet. We could about every little thing for days.
Can't wait for the next co-hosted meet.

Years ago I tried Viva's 2A3 from a local dealer, and it's hands down the best tube amp I've heard for LCD2 and HD800. Everything sounds so in sync and effortless that it's impossible to resist playing just a few more songs, which stretches into albums. Given that 845 is 2A3's upper model I can only imagine what kind of luxury it is to spend a few hours with it.

 

[johnjen]

That was a very interesting meet.
A cross section of HP users, and speaker folks, including the very top end of the food chain.

And I had to swap 2 wires for each channel on the secondary inputs (XLR pins 1 & 2, for those who know what that means), that mirror image thing between Male - Female connector's will get'cha every time if you're not careful. hahahahahahaha

A good meet with a wide diversity of folks in attendance and with a wide range of topics discussed and shared…

dave r's DIY tube rig took a BIG step up from the last time I heard it,
I got a chance to hear the brand new 'fresh' out of the box Denafrips dac,
the HEDD's, (again),
Muziqboy's technical marvel of a digital to analog setup,
a set of HD820's (for the first time, and I was very pleasantly surprised),
a set of THE Meze's, (very nice indeed),
the Viva amp (I think it was source SQ limited, but that's just a guess, not being familiar with any of that chain),

I even got a chance to use a direct feed from the TT setup straight into my amp and 800-Jmods, AND gave them to Gary Koh (MR. Genesis himself) to compare his speakers to modded HD800's, while the speakers were playing…

Bait that hook, I always say…
Just to see if he nibbles/bites or to see if the hook gets set…
hahahahahahahahahahahahaa

JJ