New Jersey meet 2/26/06

[hirsch]

Headphone geeks gathering. Canman's friend came to see the lowlifes he hangs with...

K-701 coming out of RKV/Impedanzer

Stevieo cleaned up nicely for the meet

Canman's Lavry DAC with Pass Labs Aleph 3 amp. This could be one of the finest K-1000 rigs I've heard.

Eastsound CD player, Raptor, and another player whose name I may never have known.

I didn't do a lot of listening at the meet. My style now is to pick three or four things I want to hear. The Raptor was one of them. Now, I've gotten tired of a lot of the fighting. Some friends of mine like the Raptor, and I'd love to be able to say nice things about it. However, that just isn't happening. This is the fourth Raptor I've heard, and every one has sounded incomplete, in one way or another. In this case, being driven from the Eastsound, there was absolutely no attack to the notes. Tonally it was OK, but a drum had no leading edge, a string wasn't plucked, there was no dynamic to the sound. This leads to a very forward vocal presentation, with instruments sounding as though they are buried deep in the mix. A lot gets lost listening to this. The music never quite comes alive. I recalibrated my ears using my Earmax Pro, and all of the characteristics the Raptor was missing were present. Headphone was L3000. The Raptor is a very frustrating amp for me. People keep raving about it, and I haven't heard one that I'd rate as a better amp than the MG Head.

Headroom MicroStack, and Ray's Hornet. Ray is finally approaching Xin in terms of miniturization.

AKG-340 seems to have made a comeback recently.

Laptop with Corda Aria, and another amp whose name has slipped my mind.

The Musical Fidelity A5 and X-Can v3. I was looking forward to this, as the X-Can v2 was a favorite of mine. Unfortunately, I think Musical Fidelity took a wrong turn somewhere. This rig has lots of detail, lots of bass, and sounded completely sterile. Midrange was slightly sucked out. I wanted to rip my headphones off after a minute or two. What happened to them? I know they can make products that sound better than this.

Chord transport and DAC driving an Aria. This source sounds as good as it looks, and IMO it looks good.

Theta transport, Ack! dAck! but no name on the amp, and my memory is failing me again.

Mikhail tries to figure out what's wrong with the ES1...

...and this was the culprit. Although this CDP by Leonardo was supposed to be the designated source for ES1, and theoretically should have performed at G08 levels, it didn't. In fact, my Creek CD53 is by far a better player. Lack of detail, at least in balanced mode and a slightly abnormal frequency response had Mikhail wondering if his amp was broken. It wasn't, but this source is eye candy, not ear candy.

Dared monoblocks powering K-1000's, with a UHC Signature to use them with other headphones.

Creek CD53 driving balanced Maestro ZR. Headphones were balanced SA-5000's. Note the balanced Ergo 2's. Not many people tried these. Too many cameras around, I think

Thrice brought his Wadia, my MG Head, M^3 and balanced M^3.

RKV driving Ergo AMT. This headphone is based on the Heil Air Motion Transformer, used as a tweeter in ESS speakers (there's a review of a speaker using this driver in this month's Abso!ute Sound). Note the rare Audio-Technica woodie.

Wheatfield HA-2, Stax SRM-007t, and the best headphone of them all, the Koss Pro 4AA. High-Fi in about 1970 or so. I used to have a pair of these. You can listen for up to 30 min before your ears are bathed in sweat.

Sony SCD-1 driving SFT Dynamight. Nice solid state rig. When I heard it, the imaging seemed shifted to the right, and I'm not sure everything was working properly, so I'll hold off on impressions.

Back to thrice's amp...

Best sound of meet. Singlepower ES1. Two HE90's were attached most of the time.

Telica's brownies made it worth the drive.

[hirsch]

I had actually bought an X-stack (X-DAC, X-PSU, X-10v3 (or whatever they call the buffer), and didn't like that at all. I tried burning it in, and couldn't get a handle on the sound. Not an improvement on a cheap Toshiba DVD player. I wound up returning it, somewhat confused by the whole experience. MF is sounding very odd to me lately.

[Dusty Chalk]

Actually, that's a Wheatfield HA-2, not HA-1.

Just a minor quibble.

[hirsch]

Actually, that's a Wheatfield HA-2, not HA-1.

Picky, picky, picky. Just for that, I'm going to finish the last pretzel in the magic barrel

[CD44hi]

Picky, picky, picky. Just for that, I'm going to finish the last pretzel in the magic barrel

damn. I thought there was no end to that barrel of pretzels.....

[thrice]

Theta transport, Ack! dAck! but no name on the amp, and my memory is failing me again.

The amp is an M3 that I made and was auctioned off on Head-Fi during the Hurricane Katrina fundraisers. It is being powered by a STEPS. bozebuttons was the winner of that particular auction.

[Dusty Chalk]

Picky, picky, picky. Just for that, I'm going to finish the last pretzel in the magic barrel

Noooo...!!! :argh:

But I know how much you hate being wrong, so I thought I'd correct you.

BTW, you shouldn't judge higher-end MF equipment based on your experience with the entry level equipment. Your assessment of the A5 is well enough at face value, but you really should have heard the A308 in my boss's system -- ranked right up there with the best I've heard, including Meridian G08.

[digitalbill]

Thanks hirsch for the meet impressions/photos. What an amazing variety of gear to sample. I've spent a lot of time with the XCan/XRay v3 combo - probably more than anything else I've owned, since it's my office rig. I've been really impressed with the XRay and less so with the amp. The XCan sounds great with a few headphones such as the PS-1 and DT700. It seems to tame their bass-heavy tendencies and bring out more of the mid-range goodness. With other headphones, it just doesn't sound right - just like you said. I've tried numerous Audio-Technicas and Sennheisers with it and was not impressed. That said, for $400 it's been a solid,reliable amp.

[Dusty Chalk]

Thanks hirsch for the meet impressions/photos. What an amazing variety of gear to sample. I've spent a lot of time with the XCan/XRay v3 combo - probably more than anything else I've owned, since it's my office rig. I've been really impressed with the XRay and less so with the amp. The XCan sounds great with a few headphones such as the PS-1 and DT700. It seems to tame their bass-heavy tendencies and bring out more of the mid-range goodness. With other headphones, it just doesn't sound right - just like you said. I've tried numerous Audio-Technicas and Sennheisers with it and was not impressed. That said, for $400 it's been a solid,reliable amp.

Try modding it. I, too, am underwhelmed with the X-CAN (in my case, V2)'s performance, but I once heard a modded X-CANv2 combined with a CD3000 that was just magical.

(And it was Hirsch's for a while, so when he refers to that combination, we're referring to the same thing.)

I think several people have come to the conclusion that caps are more important than tubes, even.