jp11801
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Posts posted by jp11801
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The summer NorCal meet is set up for Saturday 6/28/2008 in San Mateo at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel in the Iris room. The room is 1100 square feet and will hold 18 6 foot tables. This set up should hold up to 36 member rigs or less with vendor set ups. We have the room from 10am to 6pm we have power on all four walls but members will need to bring power strips to distribute power. I will be contacting the usual vendors to see if there is an interest in coming to our meet. Craig from Eddie Current has said he should be there with a new amp that he has been fine tuning since CanJam.
Here is the Hotel information Hilton Garden Inn Hotel San Mateo California - San Mateo Airport Hotel - San Mateo, CA Hotels
They are located right off 92 and they are 8 miles from San Francisco airport. This location is easy to get to from both San Francisco and San Jose and is right across the Bay for our East Bay members.
The hotel normally has rates of $99 a night but if we have 5 or more people who express interest in attending from out of town we cab get a slightly reduced rate possibly.
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unfortunately no other than there were two in use in different rooms one done up nice in beautiful wood plinth and another in a what appeared to be a birch plywood plinth unfinished (looked ghetto sounded top flight) that was used in the GoTO big horn roomany pics or details about the Garrard?
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I posted these over on HF and wanted to share them with you all as well. We spent 2 days at this insane event, what a great time I am beat but here are the first set of pics and thoughts.
Sonist Speakers these were in many of the rooms and they make 2 types of speaker both use a ribbon tweeter and a standard bass speaker. They are fairly efficient which is why many used them but IMHO they are mediocre at best. They image poorly and seem slightly off tonally I really wanted to hear the electra print amps and get a good impression of them but it was impossible as they used the floorstanders of these and it left me feeling flat.
Cold War Amp this amp was a beauty and the craftsman that built these also ran the amp building workshop. The amps were powering Klipsch speakers and had a great turntable as a source with a top of the line bottlehead phono pre amp sweet. What a great guy he wound up spending alot of his time hooking up people from the seminar with tips on troubleshooting the amps they built ensuring each and everyone worked.
Goto speaker room Not sure who built these beauties but they were massive and were right up there for sound of the show for me but were edged out by the Exemplar room (more on that later). The Horns were sourced with a Garrard turntable and when they played a Louis Armstrong record you felt like he was right there in the room with you. This was spooky good stuff but you need a huge dedicated room to make these work and a big budget to match.
Two Bald Guys Room This room featured a single driver DIY speaker kit that cost $65 plus the price of cabinets you build with plans they provide. This room was really good not up to the exemplar room or the giant horns but showed what you could do on a budget. This speaker would provide most people with tons of pleasure. They need a sub as they go down to about 65hz.
HeadFi Room We saw a lot more traffic than I thought we would. HUGE thanks to Steve for setting this up and providing my amp with round trip transport to the event. Now there is a fair amount of skepticism regarding headphones at events like this an I feel like we made a few converts. Both Eddie Current amps sounded great the Zana and the HD2 really provide two views of the sonic picture that are stunning in their own way.
I fell back in love with the Audio Technica AD2000 all over again and will be soon on the hunt for another pair. They scale well with better amps Dave P was there and brought along some great headphones the Denon's with the Markl mod was in attendance and I can say yes the mod makes a big improvement in these cans. They still do not do it enough for me to put them in the line up and they are not close to the R10 but they are really good headphones and I could see many liking them. The had an immediacy that was really nice and staged well side to side but sis not provide stage depth. Soundstage is a big deal for me probably more than most. Dave also brought the ED9s with him and they were a hit with many that stopped by. They are not my cuppa tea but they are top flight cans. Don had a pair of Beyer 770s and after he cajoled me into it I put them on my head. I have never liked Beyers as they great at the top and bottom but were only so so in the mids on past listens. These 770s had the midrange mojo and I am not sure if there were changes along the years with this model or not but the version Don has are great. I brought along my RS1s and 650s balanced with APS cables and others can tell you what they thought. I love them but and they each suit moods and music for me but I may be biased as I own them.
As I stated before the Stacker amp was a revelation for me at the show and is on the radar and will be my first DIY project. Better buy Band-Aids now for the solder burns that I am sure to get.
We had a S.E.X amp there was well that was good sounding and mated with the RS1s well. I shared a ride with the builder to the airport leaving the event (sorry I forgot your name after a long day at the airport). I did not get a pic of this build it had character and had taken some hits on the plane ride in. It had MASSIVE oil caps in it that stuck out the bottom. I would recommend to anyone that has the miniaml skills or want to learn to pick up a kit from Bottlehead as this amp does sound great and can be modded/upgraded easily. We also had a benchmark and PPX in attendance but I did not spend time with them as they have been well talked about in the past. Here are pics from our area.
Eddie Current Amps with Steve's tape source
stacker amp and some of Don's other builds.
More to come tomorrow
Exemplar Room, Teres 265 turntable, Modwright room and seminar thoughts.
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one could always mod it for RCA output....
that is the idea no one has done snip the female 1/4 monos right off that fucker and solder on some shiny rca!
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Dom, the answer is easy. Listen to your setup both ways and see if it sounds different and,. if so, what sounds better to you. I'll be surprised if you hear a difference but you might.
All "hospital grade" means is that it won't spark when plugs are inserted or remove. I do agree that the sockets usually used are not of great quality.
hospital grade also grip better than the limp dick grip the ones in my apt do atm.
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even with the rat shack adaptors it sounds sweetThat sucks, I was hoping for plug and play. I'll have to find a place that sells non-shitty adapter or get into DIY cables.
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I am on a sony DD vintage binge here is the ps-x7 table great sound I would put on par with my linn lp12 better in some areas and not as good in others.
When I get the supplies in I am looking at a three stage arm wire upgrade. The headshell tags, these are easy, an upgraded rca wire the stock are really crappy but the table has to be disassembled for that and the really tricky one would be a tone arm rewire with cardas 33 gauge wire. I could potentially skip stage 2 if I figured out a way to avoid going to the board with the wire and come straight out of the tone arm the rca connectors. This would avoid the solder joints to the pcb board and out for the pcb board.
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Dom I would focus on better PS for an amp or source where possible over the cable. The PS Nate made me for the apogee mini dac did improve the sound over the wall wart. As long as the cord is decent ala quail or volex you should be fine another thing is to look at the wall socket and think about upgrading that to a hospital grade they grip better and you can't believe how shitty the cheap $2.50 wall sockets most builders use are.
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Mike the BEL look like they are great amps and while they are up to MK V right now there is an MKI on a-gon for a grand , they look to be $4k amps. Maybe you could bribe Tom to let you audition his spare BEL with your speakers. Sorry to put you on the spot Tom.
Anyway there are tons of HQ options to look at on the used market that in all likelyhood will best the $900 monos.
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Man I miss the Falcon Pub fish and chips.
Around here many to mention but Alembic on Haight st stands out for great small plates. 21st Amendment also makes standout fish and chips.
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while I have no background in computer audio science, my sound cleaned up with the use of a reclocking device like the assemblage ultajitterbug. This was needed when taking data off the usb port but when using the firewire port with the duet the sound is magic. There are two pretty big threads both here and on headfi on the Duet. Grawk, Tyrion and I are pretty big proponents of it. I am still fiddling around with other dacs mainly for fun not out of necessity. I felt it was on par with or better than many of the $2k cdps I have owned. The headphone jack is just ok but the output to 1/4 jacks sound top notch. Good luck with your search.
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x2 on APS and while you are at it get the rewire done
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last dna .5 sold for $600 and a modded by smc they go for $1200 ish
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I highly recommend the computer as source option. I tried the trends and Hagusb connections for computer usb output. I purchased the Hagusb in the aes config and both were good. I could not get the trends to lock with my jitterbug or sonic frontiers transdac in the coax format but in aes it locked right away. Indra if you have a macbook the apogee duet is the way to go, bests most dacs in the sub $1500 range and is made specifically for core audio in your mac. They run $500 in the US and since they are powered by the firewire connection there is not the usual voltage issue. Sweetwater.com is a great outfit to get these from.
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sweet pick up, although this company makes me nervous with the tubiness knob on the cd player and the "tube sound" without the tubes on this one. They seem to be well thought of on the boards with little dissent though. Listen carefully between them and the cary though before the trail period is up. They should solve your heat issue though although with the System Audio Rangers you should be on the look out for a top flight amp.
For the same price as these you could pick up a McCormack DNA .05 or 1 and I know those sound great!
Happy listening and report back what you hear.
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congrats and many years of happiness
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sora sound , Mehran is the man sent out the cart prior to my payment hius is one of the good guys on A-gon
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I can report that the biotracer on the ps-x500 mated with the xyz bloom sounds great and is a fine match
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oops saw Reks clarification about the HD2 after this post
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picking up my second Sony TT tomorrow from fedex tomorrow a ps-x7. Hopefully they did not play kick the can with it I'll know more tomorrow.
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Terry welcome to headcase!! I'd love to hear the maggies some day and let me know when you want to go to an A's game I'm always in for that if I am in town.
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I heard the Zu's at HES in NYC and they were good until we asked them to rock they failed miserably with led zep
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I dunno no list of 100 titles for such a varied genre would ever be complete. I tend to view these lists as a great way for the average fan to fill in the collection and get turned on to different styles or overlooked artists.
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my near term dream rig is a pair of total victory speakers with either wavelength or Frankenstein 300bs
NorCal Summer Meet 6/28/2008
in Meets
Posted
thanks the rate the coordinator talked about was around $85 so we'll see. I'd love to get a few SoCal members there for this.