[gsferrari]

Just got back home from the meet

nice to see the impressions pouring in already and it will get intensive tonight and tomorrow...I am still cleaning up my room and getting my gear back into place and it will be a while before my pics and videos come up. Also - most of my images/videos are in Matthews hard drive and I will have access to them tomorrow...so others - please keep the impressions coming...

Back to straightening out my room

 

[gsferrari]

[size=x-large]gsferrari's meet impressions
[/size]

Introduction :


tyrion broached the subject of hosting a HeadFi meet a few weeks after the Orlando meet in March 2004. He gave us a tentative date which shifted about initially but finally locked onto the Oct 23 weekend. The Florida HeadFi team kicked into gear getting the show moving and we contacted manufacturers for participation and for loaner gear. We had tried to get hold of Ray Samuels for the Orlando meet but he could not make it despite his best efforts. This time he promised to make the meet and he was true to his word. Several "virgin" HeadFiers expressed interest in coming to the meet but ultimately only Frank (Flecom) showed up. Steveio was a BIG surprise for me because I had expected someone younger with little or no gear

Instead we found this mature guy with R10, PS1 and some really interesting stuff...fantastic.

Well...the dates were fixed, people were making travel plans and carpooling arrangements. Oct 23rd couldnt have come any sooner

Oct 22nd 2004 :


By this time we knew that Raul would not be coming and we did not expect to see Wayne at this meet because of the problems in the Cayman islands. JeffL and another "virgin" also confirmed that they would not be able to make the meet and I was worried that things were thinning out right at the end.

I was expecting a package of Gilmore V2-SE (old model) and Gilmore Lite (current production) to be delivered to tyrion's house today. What I was NOT expecting was my own Gilmore V2 (modded to get it close to V2-SE standards sonically without all the inputs/outputs and functionality extras of the Headamp V2-SE) which was built for me by sft in Taiwan. The amp was not due for at least another week but the USPS guy walked up to me with the amplifier less than 10 minutes before I walked out of the house to ride with NightWoundsTime (Matthew) to Miami !!!

I was thrilled because my amp would have a gala debut at a HeadFi meet and would immediately go under the critical eye of the members there...baptism with fire as they say

With all the gear packed and ready to go I made a final "notice" post on the meet thread and NightWoundsTime showed up on cue. We loaded up and drove to Sarasota to meet up with Agile One (Gene). I switched from Matthew's Cadillac to Gene's Mercedes because we wanted a cell phone in each car to keep the convoy (of 2 cars) together

We reached Fort Lauderdale one hour earlier than scheduled, checked into the hotel that Gene had booked us rooms, checked the forums quickly to see if anything new had popped up and we went out for lunch to a chinese restaurant. This was the first time I ate alligator meat and it was fantastic!!

After a VERY filling lunch we keept our appointment with the lawyer (tyrion) and met our kind host in his beautiful home. Time : 7:30pm.

We began a preliminary setup and arrangement of furniture. The home-wrecking process was underway in true-to-headfi style

After we were comfortably settled in everyone started with some "pre-meet" listening and tweaking. I spent some time with the three Gilmore amplifiers that I had on hand...

At 10:30 PM Gene and I drove down to the airport to pick up Ray Samuels. The maestro arrived and (my impressions of Ray Samuels will follow soon

) we collected his gear, loaded up in the car and headed straight to the hotel. Matthew finished up whatever he was doing at tyrion's and headed to the hotel to meet up with us.

Back at the hotel I stole Ray's portable setup (I can get into bags, pouches etc, very quick...slippery fella this gsferrari

) and started listening to his setup.

Vintage Sony D-303 ?? (not sure of exact model) -> Emmeline SR-71 -> Shure E5 !!!

The track : Chick Corea and Bobby McFerrin Duet - Armando's Rhumba

I was SHOCKED! by the sound!! This was something unbelievable...the IEM's sounded like really nice speakers...no in-head soundstage and the bass was unreal! Keeping my earlier home setup as reference - this setup was "sonic shock". Maybe I was jaded with my home setup but I thought this portable setup was a step up from RP5+HD650!!

Ray and I then got into a HIGHLY technical discussion about amplifier design and the others looked bored

LOL However the conversation was quite interesting for me and I learned a LOT from those few hours I spent talking to the man. We moved on to general topics and the discussions became interesting and various topics were touched.



SATURDAY : 23rd October 2004

We decided to call it a night at 3:00 am and woke up at 9:00 am to shower and head to tyrion's for final setup in preparation for the meet that was scheduled to begin at 11:00.


BREAKFAST :

Now - Ray Samuels loves eggs

He cant have enough eggs...there is no such thing as too many eggs...here is a man who can singlehandedly wipe out the entire poultry population of a developing country

LOL

And to his dismay - this was Saturday and the hotel served eggs ONLY on weekdays

Poor Ray was enraged and he made it a point to tell the folks running the show every time one of them passed within earshot...HILARIOUS stuff...

After an eventful breakfast (where Ray gave me a lesson in using the Waffle Maker

) we loaded up the cars with Ray's stuff and headed to the meet venue.



FINAL SETUP :

Ray's stuff was linked up and everyone setup their gear in their places knowing fully well that within minutes everything would be torn apart, shuffled and re-distributed randomly across several square feet of cables, amps, headphones, sources, media, people and dogs.

Yes - dogs!!! One of them (Girl - Denver...girls love me...

) followed me everywhere and we really got along very well. I must have said something because she chewed up my Radioshack Bread-Board

LOL

tyrion offeref to pay for a new one but if I told him how much that thing really cost - he would have had a fit!!! I decided to be nice to the host and let him go this time...why? because the only company I had today was this sweet doggie

(Actually tyrion paid up - I did a "Nah!" with my best Soprano voice and rejected his offer because we all owed him a lot for making the meet possible...yea rite!! LOL )

I dunno...had a shower, brushed my teeth, sprayed some really good (Issey Miyake) stuff and tried to be uncharacteristically polite...still people avoided me like the plague

right!

The meet got well and truly underway and then something BIG happened...or rather...someone BIG walked in - this was someone who was NOT supposed to be there

Wayne McManus and his friend Kimane joined us after all. This was supposed to be tyrion's BIG surprise but you know how bad lawyers are at keeping their clients secrets

LOLLERS :


J/K



Stevio and Flecom joined the fun and now it was PARTY TIME!! Someo n00b decided to turn on the speakers whenever I sat down to do some serious listening and it REALLY pissed me off. I taught the dog how to urinate on tires of expensive automobiles on a regular basis

If your car smells - you know you messed with gsferrari and he decided to do something about it instead of letting you off the hook...

LOL


More impressions to follow...hands are getting tired and besides - I want to get some pictures out of the way now...

 

[tyrion]

I am sorry I missed the post meet festivities. I could have used another few hours but I had dog issues to deal with. I am happy to report that Guinness did not need to go to the ER but will be seeing a vet. specialist this week. I want to take this opportunity to thank both my dogs, Guinness and Denver for their behavior at the meet. I wasn't sure how it would go over with them hanging around. It seemed that everyone tolerated them and they tolerated everyone. The only exception was when Guru told Denver to be quiet when she voiced her opinion of my MS2's:

All she was saying is that she liked them better than the SR-325's.

 

[gsferrari]

[size=medium]These are pictures of raaj's $4.00 (Walmart) solution for a wearable case for the Emmeline SR-71. A pair of these will be great - one for iPod and the other for the SR-71!!

[/size]

The last picture shows raaj in the foreground and Kimane (Wayne's buddy) in the background...for a non-headfier he showed amazing restraint despite severe boredom, confusion and disgust at seeing all these educated people throw so much money at such unnecessary gear and listen to some really terrible music

 

[gsferrari]

Ray Samuels and raaj setting up some gear for an AB test...

Ray Samuels and Wayne discussing beautiful women...you thought this had something to do with audio gear? when these two men are together - the only curves that get discussed are NOT frequency response related...you get the picture

The Rudistor Egmont Signature Electrostatic amplifier. This baby needed new tubes, wayne provided and it sang like nothing else that I have heard before. Omega-2's sounded unbelievably full and enjoyable

Frank (Flecom) checking out the guts of my Gilmore V2

NightWoundsTime ABing the Maestro, Moth Audio and MPX3 amplifiers...

Tyrion's brother is another non-headfier but IMO he was the most sincere of all. He would sit down with a setup for at least 30 minutes straight before moving on. He was with the Moth Audio + MS-2 for more than one hour...this is a dedicated music/audiophile who should be shielded from the virus known as HeadFi

LOL

 

[gsferrari]

More pictures and videos on the way...should be up tomorrow...

But first - more impressions :-


Gene (agile one) has a Stealth and a Maestro. I did some close listening to these amplifiers out of a Meridian 588 with and without the AB switch. Matching volumes was hard because they use stepped attenuators but I got it pretty close at one point.

I noticed that the Maestro was clipping at higher volumes. These are NOT recommended listening levels if you want your tympanic membranes to last longer than a McDonalds big mac

This was not present in the Stealth. throughout the range of the volume (within bearable listening levels). I had to rest my ears for about an hour after this experiment

Between the Maestro and Stealth there are some subtle and some obvious differences. I will proceed to list them out below :-

* Stealth has a well developed frontal soundstage. The "rear" projections that accompany trailing notes is nicely centered and as the notes dissipate the sound seems to be sucked through the head and rejected out of the back. Because of this there is an "intensity" that one can associate with the HR-2 and XP-7.

* Maestro has a more "rounded" soundstage and there are less consistent/predictable trail dissipations on the notes (example snare drum / tabla). However - this gives the sound a more "organic" touch which is also pleasant but it feels more "removed" than the Stealth.

When the 6moons.com reviewer called the Stealth "A tube amplifier designed by a solid state guy" - he was never more far from the truth. This is a ridiculous statement because barring these subtleties - the Maestro and Stealth are VERY hard to distinguish.

Is this a bad thing? NO!!

What this means is that they are both true to the input signal. It is when two amplifiers sound glaringly different that you have to wonder about which one is good and which one is colored. In this case - either both amps are colored in a similar fashion OR both are quite transparent...

Considering that these are top of the line offerings - I will assume the latter. Choosing between the Stealth and Maestro comes down to preferences and I doubt too many people will be able to discern them in a blind AB test.

I was shocked by the level of performance these amps are able to churn out. Speed, attack and bass...the R10s come ALIVE and music leaps out at you...

The difference is that - with the Stealth - the music leaps out at you, grabs you and sucks you out leaving you a nervous mess of excited and thrilled flesh...orgasmic...

With the Maestro the music jumps out at you, grabs you, crumples your suit, apologizes, smoothes your suit out again and leaves you excited, scared and weak kneed but happy to have survived the encounter...

Another analogy - The Stealth is a mugging in a dark street corner where you get mugged and robbed...the Maestro is a mugging in a dark street corner where the cops intervene before something crazy happens...both are equally scary - the end result is subtly different...

How ready are you for these monsters?

I was not ready...I paid the price...my ears cannot listen to my setup without wistfully dreaming about the Stealth and the Maestro...I want one of each

 

[GlowWorm]

Looks and sounds like it was a great meet, nice to see that one of the "big boys" (Ray Samuels) showed up. Speaking of Ray, how did the Eddie Current HD40 prototype stack-up to his flagship Stealth ll, and Singlepower's top-of-the-line Maestro? Thanks

 

[tyrion]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlowWorm Looks and sounds like it was a great meet, nice to see that one of the "big boys" (Ray Samuels) showed up. Speaking of Ray, how did the Eddie Current HD40 prototype stack-up to his flagship Stealth ll, and Singlepower's top-of-the-line Maestro? Thanks

I didn't get a chance to compare to the Stealth. I did spend some time comparing to the Maestro and the Eddie Current held up nicely. Having said that there is a reason why the Maestro cost at least double of what the Eddie Current amp would sell for. I believe there are others that spent more time with the two amps than I did. I would say the Eddie Current falls somewhere between the Maestro and the upgraded MPX3.

 

[GlowWorm]

Thanks tyrion, I guess it's somewhat unfair of me to ask for a comparison of the HD40 to the Stealth and Maestro considering they are twice the price, but it still seems to make a good showing of itself none the less.

 

[flecom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gsferrari Frank (Flecom) checking out the guts of my Gilmore V2

you know ive seen some pretty terrible pics of myself, but that has to be one of the worst lol

im going to be posting the other half of the pics when i get home from work

 

[tyrion]

Quote:

Originally Posted by flecom you know ive seen some pretty terrible pics of myself, but that has to be one of the worst lol im going to be posting the other half of the pics when i get home from work

That's because you weren't the photographer.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gsferrari Between the Maestro and Stealth there are some subtle and some obvious differences.

What headphones did you use and what tubes were used?

--Lan

 

[gsferrari]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lan What headphones did you use and what tubes were used? --Lan

Headphones : R10
Tubes in Maestro : Tung-Sol (Not sure which ones...maybe agile one will clarify)
Tubes in Stealth

Definitely NOT Electro-Harmonix...maybe agile one will clarify)

 

[gsferrari]

I am missing one SACD from my collection : Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon

Lemme know if one of you guys have it...thanks!




[size=xx-large]FOUND - PLEASE IGNORE THIS POST!![/size]

 

[flecom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tyrion That's because you weren't the photographer.

lol

i was refering to how i look not the quality of the pic