[bhjazz]

[size=large]Seattle Meet Impressions Thread 11/17/2007
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Hello Seattle!

Hey, we had a great meet! I was a little nervous that people might not show up, but y'all surprised me. Hell, we even had four, count 'em, FOUR new members. To the regular members, good to see you. To the new members, welcome!

So post away. I'll get some photos together and let the games begin!

Brian

 

[bhjazz]

Another Seattle meet finished. They seem to go by so fast. As socrates said, we were nailed having this site go down less than a week before our meet. With all of the contact information, including phone numbers (!) locked away, I was nervous and frustrated. I was hoping that people would remember where it was, and when it was. (I later found out that some enterprising souls were smart enough to check the cached pages form google, so I have to say I was highly impressed!)

My two biggest concerns were: Justin from Headamp, and some gear coming in from Headroom. If the meet fell on it's ass, we'd have a difficult time trying to get any traction with these guys in the future.

We split the difference.

Connections and emails somehow went askew with Justin, so he played it safe and opted not to come. Gah! I'm definitely sorry that happened, but I know this was his hard-earned dollars going towards the visit, so I absolutely don't blame him. Justin, if you're reading this: we'll plan another meet and you are definitely invited. By that time, we can trade email, phone numbers, whatever!

As luck would have it, though, Andrew Hertsens dropped me an email at my home address, and got a package together really fast, and had it out to me in a few days. Thanks, Andrew! The box showed up with the 2007 Portable Desktop and the 2006 pimped out Desktop. Here's a photo of the opened box...heh heh...

But hey, where's the portable? It was in that nifty bag a minute ago....

Oh, that's right, I'm listening to it while packing. Never mind!

12:20pm. Ugh. Where is everyone. This doesn't look good...

But in the back of my mind I thought: come on. People will show. And they did. THANK GOD! Here's xtreme4099 and BigPoppa setting up.

(And socrates showed up with Pizza....'sall good my brotha!)

Socrates (Young) vowed to bring less gear. Looks like that didn't happen. I was happy with that

.

Nate: Wow. I got to listen to the Nugget and was really impressed. I started in with a pair of K701s, but was just not gettin the love. Then I plugged in my HD600s and wow, everything just worked. Beauty! A very musical sound and feel from the B3. Sweet!

They're multiplying!!!

The coolest part of the meet was getting new members. Here's kelvinz enjoying the MPX3.

And here's kelvinz enjoying the MPX3 (yeah, I just said that. But at least the police could identify him from this picture.)

Here's xtreme4099 pretending he can't hear socrates singing along.

Gil with his customized KSC75s. Behind him is my DVP-S9000ES driving the Headroom gear.

Another new member, Akui, who sponged up so much information. He's already modding his gear. Go DIY!!!

aNOTHER new member!!! wittyzTH. I was happy to see him here as hi ride to the meet was quite compromised from the heddfy outage.

Andy (HerrBlau) blazed in a quickly set up his desktop machine. Looks all profesisonal like down to the pen! Zhalou, too!

 

[bhjazz]

Here's Joshatdot's buddy K. What a guy. The wisecracker with a totally straight face. He's all fly here...

But once we got him into the RS-1s, he fell into a trance...Welcome to the dark side, K!

ArI have no idea what was really on that monitor...

The ATH-ESW9. I had a short listen with these and definitely liked them. The bass was surprising and I didn't expect to hear that much!

Andy with the pimped-out desktop.

And...Andy lost in the wonderful world of the pimped-out desktop. I definitely liked this amp.

Yet another new member, George. I was impressed with him: he went straight to the DIY stuff, and began asking lots of questions about my Pimeta. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have another DIY'er in our midst! Excellent!

Okay, and the fourth of five (5, count 'em) new members. Geez! Very cool! I was totally jazzed (you could say, bhjazzed) that these new people were there. Excellent!

Mike...motherone. I understand Mike has, at any one time, something like 58 projects going at once (well, that's what I heard, anyway. My ears might have been ringing at that point). Still, he's got to be the DIY king of Seattle!

here are two shots of Mike's table.

The wood paneled units are the Millett Max, and the original Millett. Nice work!

And finally, just to prove that, just because the last two Seattle meets have been in libraries, we're not a bunch of wimps! L to R: Akui, bhjazz, K, Joshatdot, kelvinz, and Kelvinz grilfriend ______....gah! I'm so bad with names! Kudos to her for sitting through the whole ordeal all afternoon long!

I'll never forget K's story about when he met Josh. The fact that he TOLD this story in a restaurant just a few feet from other tables full of families proves the cajones on this guy. Hilarious.

 

[KobaltBlau]

Wow! great write up and photos, and thanks again for organizing! I will post some impressions soon!

 

[socrates63]

There was quite a bit of uncertainty as HF is down and the attendees had no way to communicate with the organizers. I am sure bhjazz, who organized the meet, was nervousrs about whether people would actually show up. I arrived 30 minutes late, and there were only 4 people, including myself. But soon thereafter, most of the attendees arrived and another great meet was had.

It was a blast meeting many people for the first time. Kelvinz and Akui, in particular, had the faces of kids in a candy store. It was very refreshing to see people who were truly excited about the hobby.

On to the photos... I didn't manage to take as many photos at the meet because I was too busy talking and trying out gear... well, mostly talking.

About 10 or 15 minutes after my arrival, several more people arrived. From left to right: Akui, bhjazz, WittyzTH (Big Poppa obscured), xtreme4099, kelvinz.

The Man of Nerves of Steel aka bhjazz who put the meet together

The master bhjazz speaking to the padawan Akui about all things audio

Kelvinz chillin' with his K701 and my MPX3 SE. He was absolutely thrilled to have the chance to try so many pieces of gear. He should also thank his pretty girlfriend for waiting for him for nearly 5 hours in the room with a bunch of headphone geeks.

Triad Audio Lisa III brought by xtreme4099. At the last meet, Sergio brought a Lisa III encased in a woody enclosure. This one looked pretty sweet, and sounded as good as it looked, too. The box sitting on top is the battery pack.

The Big Poppa listening to his APureSound rewired KSC75. Awesome job, Alex and it sounded fantastic.

bhjazz snagging some photos

WittyzTH listening to his ATH-W100

My first chance with the Grado HP1000 </drool>

The RS-1 and HF-1 are mine. xtreme4099 brought the HP1000.

Joshatdot setting up his PC-based speaker rig

Joshadot's friend "K" who was blown away by the HP1000 and RS-1 and was amazed at how different they sounded with the different pads

The classic pose of a meet attendee (KobaltBlau) who is trying to ignore all the chatter and concentrate on the music and gear, dammit

That's all the photos I have.

 

[vcoheda]

nice pics. lots of good gear too. despite the outage, looks like it went well.

 

[socrates63]

It's too bad I didn't get a photo of everyone who attended today. Maybe Brian managed to get a few more people as there were at least a dozen people in attendance. We even had several unregistered HF lurkers attend.

My impressions and thoughts... so little time, so many things to try

Thanks, Brian, for managing to snag the Headroom Desktop Portable and Headroom Desktop Max Amp/Max DAC. I hadn't heard these since Tyll came to Seattle with the Headroom Tour in 2005. I mostly listened to the Desktop Portable as the Max was being hogged other people (Andy, that's you >

:laugh

. The DP didn't sound anything like the original Micro Amp (DM module) that I briefly owned. The Micro Amp, as another user put, was syrupy, and I didn't care for it. However, the DP was totally different. It had a slightly warmish sound without being slow or dark. Equally impressive as the sound are all the features that Headroom managed to squeeze into the svelt enclosure. How did you manage to fit all the inputs (analog, optical, coaxial, usb)? Great job, Tyll and the gang. Anyone in the market for a desktop quality amp and DAC in a battery-powered portable enclosure should give a long and hard look to the Headroom offering. In fact, I don't think there's another company offering anything similar to the Headroom DP. I wish we can have another go at the Headroom gear during the February meet.

ATH-AD2000 received a lot of love, especially from xtreme4099. Several people were blown away. I bought them because at one time, Elephas said they were the best open dynamic headphone he had heard, and it's wise to listen to elephants.

I was thrilled to get my first chance to try out the Grado HP1000. My only two regrets were that I didn't play with them long enough, and I didn't get to try them with bowls as I'm not a fan of flats. This bad boy needs a good source and amp to sound its best. When I tried it with my M³, it was unimpressive. The β22 took it to another level (or two), and this is what led me to think that good source and amp were mandatory. Having said that, with my gear, I preferred the RS-1 over the HP1000 (gasp). It's really too bad that I didn't try the bowls with the HP1000 as I'm pretty sure it was the flats and their bassier sound that was ruining it for me.

Nugget Audio β22 received a lot of praise from several people on the build quality and unmatched sound ("This is the best amp I've ever heard" type comments). Great work, Nate! I finally had the courage to bring it home today (it had been in my office all this time). Hopefully, my wife won't notice

. My main home can is the DT990 and it sounds fantastic -- great soundstage and details, and fast to boot.

I tried the cmoy (Joshadot's variant) for the first time in more than a couple of years. Sorry, Josh, but a cmoy is still a cmoy and it can't hold a candle to more recent portable amp designs. In comparison to the mini? and PINT, the cmoy sounded muffled with no soundstage. But perhaps your cmoy is a good match for your modded KSC75.

Speaking of modded KSC75, Joshadot kramer modded his in addition to recabling them. Big Poppa also had his recabled by APureSound, and these blew me away, the sound was so clean, tight, and refined. I generally use my KSC75 when working out so I'm not too interested in throwing more money at them, but I'm now one step closer to ordering the Ety replacement cable from APureSound (Edit: I ordered the cable last week). In any case, whatever the mod, modded KSC75s sounded significantly superior to the stock version.

WittyzTH brought his ATH-W100, and I really liked them. I thought I read that some people found the W100 the worst of the ATOW. If I didn't have so many headphones, I'd be tempted to buy one if given the chance.

WittyzTH also brought his modded ATH-W5000. He said he bought it from a HF'ier recently. I can't remember the specifics but it had a foam mod as well as a recable. Akui and I a/bed WittyzTH's W5000 with my stock W5000. All we could say was that WittyzTH's W5000 is no longer a W5000. It sounded like a totally different headphone, and while the modded W5000 sounded good, it no longer resembled the W5000's signature sound (airy, sparkly highs). I'm not sure whether I'd want to take such an expensive headphone and turn it into something else.

Motherone brought his Laconic Lunchbox. I'm not sure which version it was, but it was a fun little amp. I had a brief a/b with Motherone's Millet Max, and the Millet Max was the superior amp (better soundstage, separation). I wish I had photos of Motherone's amps. The wood front face of the Millet Max and Millet Hybrid looked cool. Mike is one prolific DIYer. In addition to the three aforementioned amps, he also had a PPA v1.1, Monica2 DAC, both performance and long-life versions of the mini? and some other stuff.

WittyzTH also brought his ATH-ESW9. Akui compared it to his Senneheiser HD25, and commented that the ESW9 was significantly better. I preferred the HD25. While the ESW9 sounded a little better than the ATH-ES7 that I used to own, $300 seems a bit steep.

So much gear, and so little time!! Thanks, everyone, for coming and having fun. And thanks for helping me pack and load my stuff!

Great job, Brian!

 

[KobaltBlau]

Hi Folks, I don't have much experience/ability to describe the flavor of the sound, but I will share some observations:

I really use ABA testing to help highlight the differences between various equipment, particularly by using my own equipment in part of the chain. While a meet is a very unique experience, with opportunities to listen to all sorts of stuff, it usually does not offer the chance to do rigorous ABA'ing, for example taking music that you like a source that you like, cans that you like, and trying 5 different amps back to back. For example, as you will see below I was very impressed with the HeadRoom Desktop with Max module, but at a previous meet I was very impressed with the Meier HA-2 MKII SE, and I don't really know how to compare those two because months elapsed between my listening time with those units. What a meet does excel at is giving you a chance to listen to a set-up that is completely different from your own, from the music to the cans, and show you how good that can sound. However, I do think that it is better if you can use familiar music, which is sometimes a challenge at a meet due to differing sources (computer, portables, disc players).

Headphones:

I spent a limited time on cans this meet, listening primarily with stock HD650s (there were 2 pairs at the meet, thanks for letting me use them so much Kelvinz and Akui!), my own stock HD580s, and I also spent some time with the AKG K701s. All of these are great headphones, and I also find all of them very comfortable. While the HD650s certainly show their superiority over the HD580s, to me the differences are not huge, and I think for under $150 the HD580s are an amazing value. With the HD580s, I could still notice the differences between $1000 amps clearly. On the other hand, you could probably say that the HD650s are a great value at their price point as well. The K701s are a wonderful can as well. After reading impressions on head-fi, I expected them to be somehow brighter or less “full-bodied” than HD6X0, but I thought they gave a balanced treatment to the music. My personal preference still lies toward the HD6X0 with the gear I tried, but not strongly. I would not hesitate to pick up a set of K701s, they were very impressive overall. Now, if only someone could bring a set of Darth Beyers to a Seattle meet

Amplifiers/DACs:

My amp time centered around the “maxed” HeadRoom Desktop that they sent bhjazz for our meet (yes Young, I really was hogging it. Sorry!

) I quickly honed in on it as a “benchmark” unit. If my information is correct, this unit is a HeadRoom Desktop Amp with all upgrades, meaning the Max amp module, stepped attenuator, and Max DAC. On HeadRoom's site it prices out a bit over 1500. Unfortunately, on their site it highly recommends using the DPS with the unit if you have the Max upgrades, and I wasn't using a DPS because as far as I know they didn't send one to bhjazz. The unit sounded great as it was, but of course I wonder how much difference the DPS would have made.

I made several ABA type comparisons with this unit. First, I tried the amp section versus the integrated discrete headphone amp in my Zhaolu, using the upgraded DAC section in the D2C Zhaolu for both configurations. This was a very noticeable upgrade, as should be expected. Then, I tried the HeadRoom DAC section versus the upgraded Zhaolu DAC section, using the HeadRoom amp section in both cases. Again, the improvement in clarity and control was easy to spot. I must also note though that at around $200 I do think that the Zhaolu is a great value, with a few of the right upgrades.

Moving on from the Zhaolu, I wanted to compare the amp section with a couple of other possiblities. In each case, I used the Desktop's DAC section. First, I tried a “maxed” PPA with a DPS owned by Xtreme4099, I don't know the exact specs but apparently it is pretty pimped. The “maxed” HeadRoom Desktop walked away from this one, with a sound that was both less bright and more controlled. Sergey (Xtreme4099) suggested I compare with the LISA III instead, so I did, also using a DPS with the LISA. This was much closer to the Desktop's amp section, with good clarity and separation, but I still felt the LISA had slightly more distortion than the Desktop's Max amp section. However, I think the comparison spoke well for both the LISA and the Desktop. I think part of my preference for the Desktop was “synergy” with my Senns and the Desktop's Max DAC, but I still felt that the sound quality of the Desktop was slightly clearer.

Finally, I had the chance to compare this “maxed” Desktop with a new offering from HeadRoom, the 2007 Portable Desktop Amp. This is roughly a half-height version of the Desktop, but it also has internal batteries that allow for about 12 hours of runtime untethered. This is an impressive piece of engineering, and as of now it is a single model, without the module upgrade options of the standard desktop (such as Max module or Home DAC etc). It runs a thousand bucks. I initially thought that it was missing coax in and line out, but they are simply on 1/8” jacks which makes perfect sense due to the unit's size. According to their site it uses the “Home” amp section and the standard desktop DAC electronics.

This is a really neat unit. In ABA-ing with the maxed Desktop, the Portable unit showed that it is very impressive itself, with a similar character (not surprise), and sound quality that was pretty close to the maxed Desktop. The differences were there, but they don't jump out at you. For example, if you had a “maxed” desktop at home and a Portable for work and flying, I don't think you would feel like you were compromising when you are using the Portable, even with the same cans. All in all, there isn't really anything else out there that I know of with the quality, the portability (it's large for a portable, but it is definitely autonomous), and the integrated DAC. It would be hard to go wrong for the price if you need a lot of flexibility.

I primarily listened to these amps with the HD580/HD6X0 series, which sounded great, and I have a hunch that many of the HeadRoom guys use 650s a lot too. The K701s sounded wonderful with these amps as well.

Overall, I think the HeadRoom Desktop offerings are very impressive as an integrated package. If you're tired of having a bunch of different components of questionable quality chained together and just want to listen to the music, the Desktop offerings could be a great choice for you. If you love tube or op-amp rolling and swapping out one tiny component of your synergy chain at a time, you are probably way off in DIY land anyway

 

[kelvinz]

Don't have time yet to write up my impressions but I'd like to thank everyone for their hospitality at the meet!

Looking forward to buying my first tube amp sometime in the next month

 

[n_maher]

Glad the left coast got to experience the beta and thank you very much for the kind words regarding the build. It will certainly be a challenge to better it with its replacement, but I think I'm up to it and anyone who attends the national meet should get to see the results.

 

[bhjazz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KobaltBlau /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hi Folks, I don't have much experience/ability to describe the flavor of the sound, but I will share some observations

Andy, your writeup is superb. Lots of great observations and well-written. Nice! Thanks for posting! And good to see you again!


Quote:

Originally Posted by n_maher /img/forum/go_quote.gif Glad the left coast got to experience the beta and thank you very much for the kind words regarding the build. It will certainly be a challenge to better it with its replacement, but I think I'm up to it and anyone who attends the national meet should get to see the results.

You're welcome. And knowing you are working on a replacement makes it even more difficult for me to resist airline tickets....!

 

[bhjazz]

oops. pff. eh, I'll uhm...post something here soon...gah...

 

[Joshatdot]

Hey sup guys!

I had a great time at the meet. I just wish I got there sooner (late nite b4 & over slept). I L-O-V-E-D the HD600's & HD650's, so soft and comfortable on my head, pure clean sounds. IIRC, the HD580's were dark sounding, abit much on the midbass. I think it was Akui who brought some ATH's that also were dark sounding, he also had HD25-1 II's that were also absolutely lovely.

HP1000's = music bliss, RS1's also = music bliss. Man those HP1000's were built like a tank! I wish I had a metal shop so I could make new bands for my SR80's

I can't wait for the next meet!

 

[nnotis]

Oh no. I've been waiting for months to hear about a Seattle meet. Unfortunately, I just found out about it now. Is there going to be another any time soon?

 

[socrates63]

Sorry you missed the meet. Looks like you registered just after the May meet as well. The next one is in the planning stages with bhjazz spearheading the effort again. I believe we're looking at February.