Thanks again to Trevor for hosting the meet and letting us into his home for so long. And thanks to everyone who made it to the meet; you guys made it very enjoyable.
The main reason I came to the meet was to convert you all!!
I thought I'd found a close to reference system and wanted to see what others thought of it. It seems reactions were favorable.
Having been to numerous SUPER-MINI meets with the locals around here (many of them without having bothered posting about them here) and one major meet (the Seattle meet at Experience Audio), I've had a chance to listen to much of the gear thats been posted about here. So I was going to the meet with the goal of letting others listen to what I found worked for me, and really just hanging out and chatting with fellow head-fiers.
There were a few surprises however, both good and bad. I'll talk about the "audio-related" ones and leave the "others" where they belong: in the deepest darkest pits of hell.
1. There were a LOT of sources there. I dont think the Mission DAD was even touched throughout the entire meet. The two biggest source surprises were the REGA Jupiter and my very own MENSA+ ART DI/O:
The Jupiter is one sexy player. People seemed to be drooling over the Meridian that was there, but I thought the Jupiter took the cake. Call me shallow or whatever, but I face the facts: The first thing one notices when one looks at a piece of gear is how cool it looks. The Jupiter looked cool.
And then I plugged it in. And it sounded good. It wasnt really a surprise since I was expecting a good sound, but I was pleased that a high-end player sounded high-end. In the same league as the 507 and I agreed with Trevor's observations: More dynamic than the Meridian, but also a little weaker on the bass compared to the Meridian. I guess its a trade-off. I liked them both and chose no sides.
And then I came to the biggest surprise for me during the meet: Hearing my MENSA+ DI/O actually start showing its true colors. I bought this unit hoping it would live up to the rave reviews and cult followings that its gathered for a while now. And ended up being dissapointed. It sounded muddy, bloated, sloppy, and pretty much downright awful. My PCDP sounded better. I didnt sell it though. I had an inkling of hope that since my unit came with the stock wallwart, it might be the leading offender. People kept telling me so at least. But the sound was so bad, I felt that even better power might have a hard time cleaning this crap up.
But I lugged all my gear across the border anyway (another story of adventure seeing as how Xtreme4099 and I had over $12'000 USD worth of gear with us for "personal use".) And 'lo and behold, Zooboomofo had a stock DI/O with a Stancor PSU. A cheap PSU; people here have said it sounds much better than the stock though, but I wasnt expecting a $20 power supply to work miracles on my DI/O. I gave it a shot anyway. And came away with a huge SMILE on my face!
Holy crap, this thing actually sounds half-decent! My money hasnt gone to waste!! The bass was still very boomy, but the sound was significantly cleaner. I am not exagerating when I say night and day. I could still tell this was the DI/O but it sounded miles better.
-A better PSU for my poor under-estimted DI/O, added to future shopping list. Worth investigating.
2. I was also delighted to find that Zooboomofo had brought along his SinglePower MPX3. I'd heard SO much about these amps on the forums and I was eyeing the unit for quite a while before actually stepping up to the plate. It looked especially nice seeing as it had on Mikhail's new enclosure and no longer looked like its old toaster fore-fathers. There are a lot of manufacturers and designers of amps on this forum and this was the last one on my list that I hadnt heard before. I was excited.
And then I was sorely dissapointed.
I am a Grado guy. The Sennheisers dont do it for me (though the 650 does try). I dont like using strong adjectives when describing audio as it tends to mislead people, but when I connected my MS-Pros to the MPX3, it sounded terrible. The bass was all over the place. So much so that it was quite hard to hear anything else. I thought the the amp was broken or my headphones had somehow popped.
Which lead me down this road of thought: "People on head-fi cant possibly be raving about this sound I am hearing, since its god awful. So it must be that this amp isnt powering these cans properly. Its a tube amp. I bet it hates my low-impedance, current-hungry Grados. I bet its geared towards the Sennheiser/Beyerdynamic users on the forums." And that was that. I tried the amp with my HP-1 and though the problem wasnt as pronounced, I could still hear the bass flopping around. If this amp is any indication of the other amps in the Singlepower line-up, I'd say these amps are catered for the high-impedance headphone users out there. They definitely dont work with my Grados.
And that was all the critical listening I did during the meet. The highlight was always to meet fellow Headphone Looneys.
And to argue with them as the case may be (stupid Stax mafia...)
I had a great time hanging out with all of you and I hope some of you can come down when Seattle hosts its next meet.
Edit: Apparently the forums dont like it when I use too many smilies now.
Edit: I read that apparently Mikhail designs his amps to work with any impedance load. This was not the case with the unit I heard. Perhaps it was faulty (though it worked fine with the Senns at the meet.) Or maybe the unit was an older revision even though it had the new enclosure?