Well, that was a realy great meet, unfortunately my current setup seems rather pointless at the moment after going
. Well, here is my quick rundown of my highlights:
-Most desireable portable amp: the Hornet
---for the fun of it, I made a little setup consisting of my Rio Carbon Pearl, a barrowed mini-to-min from Tyll, the Hornet (very pretty without a case), then into my SR80's...dear god those cans have never sung like that before...then Ray handed me this cool looking little mini-to-mini cord to use,
and it sounded even better! That thing is amazing, if I had $350 to spend, I would deffinately get one of those little amps (and I mean little, it was tiny!).
-Most desireable non-portable amp: the HeadRoom Max Balanced Amp
---This thing was sexy, I just couldn't get enough of it. I swear I came back to it at least a dozen times to try out different headphones on it. The best headphone I found to go with it was the DT880, which just sounded lovely.
-Amp with the most sex appeal: Todd R's Bottlehead S.E.X. amp
---That thing was gorgeous (didn't sound too shabby either
). Deffinately one of the smoothest amps I heard at the meet.
-Most depressing moment: when I took the Pepsi challenge with the auric illuminator
---TR ran a little experiment on me in which he put in 2 cd's, both of which were identical except for one thing, one of them was treated with the auric illuminator. After playing the same song on both cd's, I picked which one I liked better...long story short, I ended up $35 poorer and I now have a box that says "auric illuminator" on the side...
-Most hillarious moment: the Aural Audio Audition vs. The Hornet
---Ray "more famous than Tyll" Samuels wanted to prove to everyone how wonderful the Hornet realy was. To prove this he ran a blind AB test between the Audition and the Hornet, with Tyll "could you turn on the crossfeed?" Hertsens as the test subject. It was one of those 'you just had to be there' moments, but it was awesome. Some of Ray's reactions were classic, and the fact that Tyll went back and forth between the two amps for which was better was pretty odd (it was a very close battle, but I think the final verdict was that he preffered the Audition, but don't tell Ray, its a touchy subject
).
-Best headphone: PS1
---Grado at it's best, that's all I should have to say.
Tyll gave us his version of the future of headphones and the world surrounding them, and it looks good. (by the way, Tyll, I see where you are coming from with the music safe idea. I have all of my music stored on an external harddrive, and if that thing went south on me, I think I would die. [size=xx-small]knock on wood[/size]).
Good times were had, and a lot of food was eaten. I'm pretty sure there was something else I wanted to say, if I remember, I will add it as an edit.
Oh, all of the above stated stuff is just in my oppinion, so more than likely you have different tastes than me and you disagree...take it all with a grain of salt.