Well, since I live so close, I'll post some impressions because I'm already home!
Firstly, I'd like to thank Voltron again for hosting us. He is an uber cool dude, and the hippest over 40 year old I know! Hehe, just kidding man, you know you rock.
As far as the meet goes, it is true, we had so much equipment, I felt really scatter brained between setting stuff up, trying stuff, and talking and eating. I must say though, I finally got to try the HE60 / HE90 comparison using the blue hawaii and the esoteric DV50 AND the accuphase DP-85. I don't want to go into longwinded hyperbole of any sort, but let me just say that I am totally fine with my HE60's! Of course the Orpheus is better, but I don't beleive the blue hawaii was doing a good job today, we had some channel imbalance issues which have been plaguing this amp for some time it seems, but additionally, some material wasn't sounding too spectacular at times, and tended to be overly bright with this amp. But if I was pressed to make some major comparisons, I would say the HE90's win out over the HE60's in soundstaging (VERTICAL depth and horizontal depth as well as a more fluid sounding pan'ing). There is also plenty of more bass low down and it is a little more fluid. This also goes hand in hand with the fact that the orpheus is physically a bigger phone with larger electrostatic membrane's. However, these differences are cream of the crop, icing on the cake, fat on the fat, hair growing on hair (ok well you get the point), types of bonuses, and after a while I tended to acclamate to this and the same goes with the HE60's. They are both tremendously enjoyable.
The other big surprise for me was the balanced HD650's out of the SDS-XLR. WOW! Amazing, the true wide eyed mind opener of the day for me. I not only feel this phone has great synergy with the SDS, but balanced mode just blew me away. For the first time in my life I feel like these senns are getting all and more than the power they need and it is going to all the right places. Let me put it this way, it was both articulate and fast, agressive and warm, forward but with the senn wide open 'relaxing' signature. Not a bit of harshness in site. These to me even sounded better than the balanced R10.
The dissapointer of the day (if I can even be sacraligious enough to use that word) would be the DHA-3000 with the L3K. I do not know if it was my DV50s source, or if it was something to do with the power the DHA was connected to (we'd had it all running through PSAudio gear)... but it just didn't sound right to me. I was expected a solid state digital amplifer to be faster, and have a greater extension on the upper end, but instead, it seemed to magnify the weaknesses of the L3k, well to put it better, it seemed to emphasize the frequency range from about 800hz-1.8khz. This range is already forward with the L3k and it ended up sounding hollow and shouty. The EQ controls only made very marginable and smooth adjustments. However, aesthetically and operationally, this amp runs smoothly and beautifully.
I compared the L3k's with the MPX3's (more modded and less modded) v.s. the Rudi RP6 and the Earmax Annivarsay. I most definitely liked the Earmax the best. The MPX's also sounded hollow to me in the midrange area and presented the L3k's in an overtly warm fashion which they do not need or benefit from. Going to the Earmax the difference is immediate. Whoever has said that these phones are not picky I think is mistaken. I want to hear these phones with more solid state setups because with tube amps it is a hit or miss kind of thing and it is noticable almost immediately. Curiously, AYT's L3k's sounded a little better (less midrange shout) and this could have been due to a number of things, but if I was to guess, I would say that it is his custom recabling. Not that he makes great cables (j/k Alex!) but I think some of us came to the conclusion that his cables lean towards the brighter side and with phones such as the L3k this is exactly what it needs, especially with warmer tube amps. The increased treble energy alleviates to some degree the hump in the midrange creating the effect of greater clarity or less harshness. However, the effect is minor and only a direct and immediate comparison would yield this observation.
As for the rest of the equipment, I heard a bunch of stuff, but nothing for very long. We had HP2's, HF-1's galore, a PS-1, an HP3000, a qualia (very much so disliked), Senn HD650's ad infinitum... but one thing I would like to comment on was that, if we do decide to do another SF 'mini' meet in the future, let's try to focus down a bit more. I felt a little scatter brained and wasn't able to try everything I wanted due to the fact that there was so much competing for my attention, and also the fact that there were other swho wanted to have a listen...
But if I was to spend some more time with the equipment on hand, I would have loved to do:
sennheiser cable tests - we went into this a little, but not enough
power cable tests
dv-50 / dp-85 sacd/redbook comparisons
HE90 / HEV70 / HE60 comparisons (we had an HEV70 but the power supply from senn hasn't yet arrived!)
I did get a chance to finally compare the HD650 and the HD600. I would still say I like my HD600 better for almost all applications, but one scenario where there was no contest was again, the balanced 650 out of the SDS. OH MY GOD. The same cable out of the 600 and much of the magic was lost. Strange! And another thing which was most surprising, the HD600's had more bass energy, but it was boomy, actually it was really low mid energy that was boomy which the 650's smoothed out. I wasn't expecting this but it seemed to hold true for the evening.
Thanks to everyone again who participated, I had a great time. You are all cool people in tHe fLeSH!! Rock On! Thanks also to Alex for putting forth the effort to bring such items like the gargantuan SDS and NeilPeart and Utep and everyone else for helping!
