Read about the Apogee mini-DAC vs Duet here:
Colorado Springs 7/13/08 Mini-Meet Report! Apogee mini-DAC vs Duet shootout, HE60/HEV70 vs HP-1000 vs PS-1 and more! - Page 2 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio
My mini-Report of the CO regional meet:
I came home with a Single Power Square Wave XL balanced desktop amp, that in my opinion beat the Headroom Desktop Balanced (Meriduan G508 source) when used with my HD600 and APS V3 cable, (Sq Wave was used with my Apogee mini-DAC). It's either Apogee is better than the Meridian G508 that was feeding the Headroom allowing the Square Wave to sound better on my system; or the G508 is better but the Square Wave is so much better than the Headroom that it made up for the difference in sources. Or, the two sources are comparable and the Sq Wave is simply better, or my ears are funny and somehow I liked it better.
I like my Senn HE60 "baby orpheus" more than the HE90 Orpheus in the mids and highs and well defined soundstage, but the HE90 is definitely better in the bass department. I need an new model, maybe a HE75, that combines the best of both.
My 3 year old prototype Woo GES gave the HE60 more of the warm lush sound I like, and with better bass, than a 2-3x more expensive SP ES-1 amp. And it was very respectable with SR-007. The SP ES-1 gave the HE60 faster attack and detail, but it sounded a bit SS with the bendix tubes.
I like my vintage electrostats as much as the new Stax O2 SR-007, thus saving me $2000 on a headphone I don't have to buy now. i listened to Asr's but also listened to Mikhail's SR-007 and I felt the same way about both of them - nice but not in a hurry to get some like I feared I would if I heard them.
The Lambda Signature excited me a lot more, and mine sounded a lot like one of mikhail's pairs - it was interesting to listen to a pair that wasn't broken in, and without knowing that fact I mentioned to Mikhail that they didn't as good as the others. I figured that all 25-30 year of vintage stats would be broken in already.
The Stax SR-007 sounds pretty good on a $450 30-year old vintage SRM-1 Mk2 Pro amp, despite what everyone says about being hard to drive. I thought the HE60 were pickier about the amp choice than the SR-007 were, and that they don't sound as good on the SRM-1. Moving to a Woo GES or a SP ES-1, the SR-007 did improve but it wasn't by as much of an amount as I was lead to believe.
There is no difference in sound between my "old" style HD600 with black screen and the "new" white screen version, as I expected.
A 2000 hour RSA Predator DOES sound better than a 200 or 700 hour Predator, as I claimed.
The Sony R10 were much better than people have described it as being. Probably the best Dynamic headphones I have heard, and even above my Edition 9, and driven easily and well by a lowly $190 Travagans Red with rolled opamps.
I already had just about everything I needed in my headphone and amp inventory to make me happy, even before I bought the SP Square Wave balanced amp today. (It just made my HD600 so much more enjoyable that I couldn't stand knowing what I was missing if I didn't get it). I do plan to review it.
And, the local head-fi community is full of really nice people that I was happy to meet.
Thanks Everyone!
PS: If the guy with the iMod doing the Predator testing still wants the Steven Kelby Vcap dock, PM me and you can help me pay off the new amp!
