November 17, 2007 East Bay SOTA Meet Impressions

[Voltron]

Well, noboody else seems to be starting the impressions thread so here goes.

I just left JP11801 and Iron_Dreamer at the Englander Pub where Peter steadfastly refused to consume alcohol. We have to work on that and maybe provide a travel couch to see what this kid has in him.

Great vibe at the meet, and it was not just the coffee jitters. Yergecheffe rulez! The meet was great fun and the stalwart 15 or so who showed up were treated to some of the best available headphone rigs. It was especially cool because nobody was feeling it necessary to strut their gear as everyone with a rig was comfortable in their own choices.

It was particularly cool to have an outsider or two -- both Alex Peychev of APL personally delivered the AMAZING NWO 3.0 and hung out the entire day with us, plus a couple Bay Area Audiophile Society (or whatever it is called) folks came along as well.

We'll get around to some pics and some real impressions I am sure, but the first one is that the NWO 3.0 is one incredible piece. My EMM Labs SE stack was quaking across the room but held up just fine with the help of the SDS-XLR. The 3.0 is quite something and when I can post up the pic of the stacked boards that make up the 32 bit DAC, you will see just a part of the madness that makes up the APL genius. When heard right out of the XLR output, the H650 sounded better than I have ever heard them direct from CD, but when the ES2 and HE90 were connected up to it, the combo was stunning. Really really really great stuff.

More to follow...

[granodemostasa]

Favorite quote: ?well, I it needs burn in.?

Great meet all around.

I?d really like to thank all of those people who helped me throughout the day; John, first of all, for hosting the meet & for driving me to and from the BART station. That was a great help and made things far smoother for me. Then there was Neil, who powered up his rig just so I could take a listen to it (that?s awesome). There was AL, who let me piggy back off the EMM Labs and do a large number of tests. And there are all those little things I just forget and all that, Thank you all.

Now to the reason why you are all reading this post: comparisons.

GRADO, yea I know that headphone reviews themselves are usually useless on headcase, where most of you all have heard this stuff and have owned it, but there are a few things that you don?t get from hearing the forum.

1. The HP1000 doesn?t necessarily have the highest highs, the lowest lows, or the most engaging midrange, but it does everything right. It?s about as balanced, clear, fast, and upfront as you can possibly want an ?exciting? headphone to be. Moreover, the can does an amazing job at portraying the small nuances, the ambience cues, the soundstage, and directionality. It?s so good, that I?m venturing to say that it?s basically the best soundstage from ANY grado, including the GS1000 (the gs1000?s FR is the primary reason why the soundstage has issues).

2. 2. The PS 1000 is the most ?electric? can out there that isn?t called the K1000. it gets about as close to a guitar and drum sound that I have ever heard any can, including the ED9. The basic thing I didn?t like was actually the overblown bass and the lack of spectacular soundstage compared to the HP1000.

3. The vintage RS-1 has a great grainy, ?tweeked? type of sound that makes it sound very refined. The can does some things very well and frankly sounds better than the modern RS-1.

4. Modern RS-1, its okay I guess. I?d pay 500 dollars for it, but I?d much rather hold out to find a vintage one.

IPOD cans.

1. The ED9 is a piece of shit, it really is. The midrange is crap, the bass is overblown and doesn?t act like bass is suppose to. Put it this way, if you want to embarrass a 1500 dollar headphone, make it play one of Beethoven?s piano concertos.

2. the ED9 is also the best ipod headphone I have ever heard straight out of the jack. I don?t? understand it, I don?t get it, it just is. The RS-1, the triple fi, the E500, the GS1000, the HP1000, the PS-1, the HD595, not this good. It actually sounds like it has a reasonable frequency response, the micro dynamics are all there?. Maybe this is what it was suppose to sound like?

Portable

1. Xin reference. Okay, it was the only portable thing there and frankly I expected it to suck. I expected the ?RS-1 out of ipod jack? type of sound from my HD650, in other words, dead to details and dynamics/excitement. I was way wrong. Let me put this straight: this is not a home amp. This amp delivers nothing that could be considered a good soundstage, it doesn?t deliver cues, it doesn?t give you 3-d head-stage, it does not give you soft instruments, surprises and it is rolled off at the top and the bottom. Fine. BUT, it made music exciting. The HD650 was not underpowered; it was getting all that it needed to do the micro dynamics, and the real dynamics, the instruments and all that other stuff. It sounded better than the best IEM I?ve ever heard straight from my ipod, and that?s more than I could ask for.

2. This brings up another strange question: what is an amp for?

The Marantaz/ ES-1/ OII rig

1. The rig was great. I could hear it be great. I could hear the stage, the details, the punch at the bottom, the beautiful highs, and the rock solid middle. It just wasn?t grabbing me off my seat, I didn?t know why.

2. With the HE90 as the headphone, this rig stole my heart. This is what was missing; that missing euphony that the HE90 provides. For the first time of the night, I stopped listening to a rig and started enjoying, taking in, and loving the music.

3. Put on rock (The Crain Wife)- okay, I get it. The HE90 doesn?t do rock.

Modded Denon/ Extreme Platinum/ Darth Bayer and modded K340.

1. The Darth Bayer is a can manufactured for the sole purpose of enjoyment. Wow, the bass was mean, like, it was just power. Wow. That thing rattled my head literally. It almost seemed dangerous to me to wear such a thing.

2. K340, now this is a good can. Okay, she doesn?t have the best treble, the best bass, or a great soundstage. So what? This thing has the cleanest, most beautiful, most accurate midrange of any dynamic headphone not named the K1000? and that includes the headphone I have a crush on: the qualia.

Freaking crazy modded UX-1/ SS-1/ Qualia.

1. damn, that?s an incredible source. The SS-1, that was good too. The treble and bass were both the most defined and detailed I heard all day.

2. I put on the HD650 on this rig, and I have to admit, I was less impressed, part of me is thinking that the Dynamight would give the SS-1 a good challenge.

3. The qualia wasn?t the same since I left her, she changed. She got a new hair cut (headband), she got a nicer car (amp), and she totally changed her attitude (cable). I don?t know if I love her anymore the way I once did, I keep telling myself that she?s the same, but every time I listen, I think that we just don?t have anything in common.

Crazy modded UX-1/ ES-2/ HE90

1. Behold the new king. Digital has never sounded that good, ever. I mean, it was as effortless as the HE90, the instruments were so perfect, the detail was right on the mark, and the dynamics were hot. It didn?t slam like a normal teac, but I?d gladly make that trade for what neil just got himself.

2. The cables, power cord, and other stuff Neils? got connected to that thing make it very intimidating.

Okay, the reason why I was there.

Wavelength Cosecant/ HD2 and Zana Deux.

1. I was a little disturbed at first. The music, the dac, and the headphones on the table were not about what the ZD does well (soundstage, detail and ability to pick up the soft/harshness of particular instruments). So for a while, the ZD sat nervously there while being compared. Then I decided to just play the game and rolled the ZD until I came upon a combo that sounded more like what the ?set up? was suppose to accentuate. (GE rectifier tubes, National Union input tube). The first comparison I did between the HD2 and the ZD was a knock out? forget the detail and soundstage, the HD2 was slamming, dynamic, powerful, tight, and murdering the ZD. After the tube roll, the dynamics between the two narrowed down, so did the differences in soundstage.

2. Basically, this became a good comparison between the differences of OTL and Transformer coupled amps. The RS-1 exhibited the biggest difference between the two, it was just far better on the HD2 than on the ZD. But not the HP1000, for some reason the HP1000, at the meet, had higher impedance or was just plain harder to drive. Whatever it was, the HP1000 responded better to the ZD. That entire thing about the detail, the ability to cue instruments, the portrayal of a good soundstage that I talked about earlier in the HP1000, was all there in the ZD, but not so much in the HD2, in fact it resembled the PS-1 far more out of the HD2.

3. The K1000 from the HD2? it was the hardest hitting, most ?electric guitar? type of sound I have ever heard. Not so much a K1000 about soundstage and expansion, as it was an K1000 about exhilaration.

4. by comparison to the ZD-F1, the K1000 wasn?t as fast, or as electric sounding, but much more ?in your face? and ?welcome to the front stage? than the F1.

Okay, a treat for all time. Why? Because both amps excel in the exact same things.

EMM labs signature edition/ SDS-XLR and Zana Deux, Equinox XLR/ Equinox SE.

1. The SDS-XLR outdoes the ZD in transparency. The SDS-XLR simply sounds like and feels as if you are looking right through to the source. It?s also a brighter amp.

2. The Soundstage wasn?t all that different, that?s the thing that stuck to me. from the same source, the difference in soundstage performance was less than 3 percent, even if one was balanced and the other SE.

3. I think that this stems from the SDS-XLR?s SE performance, which wasn?t all that impressive.

4. The SDS-XLR can reach higher and go lower, they equal on impact and dynamics.

5. the ZD is certainly more ?meat? in the middle and has it?s own Sound sig, while the SDS-XLR doesn?t have any sig in particular that I could track down.

Thoughts

1. I have a new love, the grado HP1000

2. Mexican glass bottle coke is sooo much better than the American type

3. I have more respect for the Dynamight.

4. USC will beat the Buckeyes.

5. I should hear the AWO straight to HD650, that would be very interesting.

[socrates63]

Glad to see you guys conducted the meet successfully. We also had the Seattle meet, and with the HF situation, we had about 1/3 no-shows, I think.

[tkam]

I'd like to hear more impressions on the APL NWO 3.0.

[ojnihs]

tkam needs to update his sig!!! no more headphonics!

[blessingx]

Keep the comments coming.

Granodemost, mind if I ask what setup you heard the Ed.9 with that blew?

[Voltron]

Look at this crazy thing!

[granodemostasa]

Keep the comments coming.

Granodemost, mind if I ask what setup you heard the Ed.9 with that blew?

1. the apogee mini

2. cosecant, ZD

3. ipod

you guys have to realize that my writing was a purposeful exaggeration to make the point of how surprized i was that the ED9 sounded good out of the ipod. I don't mean it blows as in ibud or bose... but at a meet like this, among these cans, shortcomings become obvious.

[Voltron]

Look at this crazy thing! Alex said it takes him about 40 hours to build this thing and it isn't even the bulk of the time he has to spend modifying the Teac. The bass is truly something and the clarity across the range was wild. The NWO involves you from the first notes and this unit was just completed the day before the meet. Alex said that after 200 hours the sound will really bloom and be markedly better than it was today. That is something to think about. Looking forward to hearing the A-B comparison at Neil's with the Emm Labs but my wallet is worried. Not saying I am less satisfied with my Emm but there is a chance that the NWO is the best digital source in the world.

Here are some more pics of the insides:

The APL, complete with the JJ Tesla ECC99 tubes on the back:

The Teac (Dan's) with the standard boards and such:

The man and his creation:

The NWO with SS-1:

The late-arriving ES-2 had to find space on the ground with the grocery bags and fanny packs and such:

[jp11801]

First off I'd like to thank all the people that showed it was a meeting of many of the Cali headphone faithful.

Some random thoughts

APL NWO this may be the most serious piece of gear I have ever heard. To me it was at it's best straight out of the pre outs to the grado rs1s, refined dynamic, lifelike tone and rhythmic like I have not heard before. This was digital with out any of the high end frequency hash and glare we have come to except out of even good digital. Ok you say well maybe you have not heard really good digital well? Ok well I've owned the wadia 302, transporter, apogee mini, exemplar , ayre cx7e... but non have been as good as this player ok the Emm labs is great but this cleanly tops it. If you are anywhere near one of these get rat shack female ended convertors and run your balanced cans direct from these. Yes it is obscenely priced at 30k which is actually not bad when you consider the price of the esoteric player, 200 hours to rebuild plus parts and the fact that as a digital source and headphone amp/pre it is at the top of the heap. ok 30k is alot of cash so be on the look out for Alex's dac of esoteric dv60 or 10 player rebuilds while not a Mt Olympus heights it should be better than most.

Al's emm labs/SP Satan's Delicious Sound WOW I walked up to this amp with a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it. It took longer to make this amp then Al could have made a baby. With that said it was worth every minute of frustrating wait and blown deadline and BS excuse. It sounds fucking great, I don't even like the 701s but with Al's silver dragoned version of these it sounded great, balanced rs1s awesome. The amp had great tone and sense of space with dynamic pacing PRAT in spades.

stax007/]ES1/marantz cdp killer combo, I am in the minority probably but the 007 is better to me than the HE90, I know it's probably sacrilege but to me it's true. This rig sounded killer on DSOTM sacd version. If I was going to go electro this is the way I would go.

more to come later...

[Dusty Chalk]

Jesus, someone modded a UX-1? Are there details about this?

[jp11801]

Jesus, someone modded a UX-1? Are there details about this?

yes check out apl's site

http://www.aplhifi.com/esoteric-product-page.htm

[Voltron]

More pics:

Gran's tube stash and the ZD:

Gran with the K1000 on the HD2:

The rest of JP's rig playing from the Mac Mini to the Cosecant DAC to the HD2. Very good stuff:

JP rig with the nice big iPod thing:

HD2 is BAD lookin':

JP enjoying his own rig with the balanced brown leather old school RS-1:

What's this? An RS-1 with old school dark wood on one side and newer lighter wood on the other? Strange but true.

But maybe the plutonium in the paper bag was the real secret to the power of the HD2:

Ori's rigs with the modded Chinese 300B amp on one side and the really nice new DAC/amp combo ($743!) that Ori was showing. Good stuff.

Still waiting for a face plate:

But it would look something like this:

Random fun with multi-thousand dollar power cables plugged into a $2.99 power strip (stolen from HeadFest 2007 by the way! )

GuzziGuy rocking to his own rig, which is worthy of rockin':

Min's Zanden rig sounds amazing every time I hear it:

Alex P got a listen and thought it was pretty great at well:

Oh, and here's my stuff, which looks a lot like it does at my house except without the big giant mirror wall behind it:

[Voltron]

Jesus, someone modded a UX-1? Are there details about this?

"Modding" is such an understatement. The APL unit uses the case, the transport and half the power supply. Otherwise everything is replaced with Alex's hand-done work and of course the addition of the s/pdif input and the tube output stage and whatever other magic goes into this beast. WOW is right.

[Icarium]

Yeah that's the APL unit me and spritzer rave about. Well this is what the fuss is all about ;p

Very eager to get my DV60 done (Won't be transformer coupled ... less dacs per channel... probably no pre-amp functionality as capacitor couple it just wont produce as much power to warrant pre-amp functionality and obviously weak ass transport versus the UX-1).

Some day I'll get that UX-1 modded though!

Alex though straight up hated my SS-1 ;p He said the SDS sounded much better (Had previously brought it to his home in Dixon with Qualias). It was still acting kind of wonky too... too bad Mikhail didn't come out and help me iron out the weird channel imbalance issues.

[neilvg]

I'll post impressions soon, but I just wanted to say, I got home safely, nothing got stolen

I had a bunch of fun today, and the great time spent with music, with people, and with some of the best rigs headphonedom has to offer, made it worth lugging 60+lb gear all over the place. Oh and having the creator of the best digital source you have ever heard hand deliver you the player and then proceed to spend the rest of the day hanging out and shooting the shit was graaavy. Yeeeaaaaahhh, a day well spent indeed.

Neil

[boomana]

Thanks for the impressions and the pics. I remain most jealous.

[spritzer]

The APL sure looks nice For those that don't know, everything after comes off the drive is upsampled to 211kHz/32bit and fed to the stacked dacs. The output stage is transformer coupled so the signal only sees a single transformer and the ECC99 tube. There is no muting circuit or anything else to damage the sound quality.

stax007/]ES1/marantz cdp killer combo, I am in the minority probably but the 007 is better to me than the HE90, I know it's probably sacrilege but to me it's true. This rig sounded killer on DSOTM sacd version. If I was going to go electro this is the way I would go.

Nice to know I'm not alone here...

[neilvg]

The APL sure looks nice For those that don't know, everything after comes off the drive is upsampled to 211kHz/32bit and fed to the stacked dacs. The output stage is transformer coupled so the signal only sees a single transformer and the ECC99 tube. There is no muting circuit or anything else to damage the sound quality.

Nice to know I'm not alone here...

And the final upsampled frequency is 6.7 Mhz.

Neil

[tkam]

stax007/]ES1/marantz cdp killer combo, I am in the minority probably but the 007 is better to me than the HE90, I know it's probably sacrilege but to me it's true. This rig sounded killer on DSOTM sacd version. If I was going to go electro this is the way I would go.

What model # Marantz was this?

[granodemostasa]

apparently there was alot more to that modded UX-1 than I previously thought... I went home and read a few hours on it and realized that at the time I had no idea what I was hearing.

[tyrion]

It looks like you guys had a great time. It would have almost been worth the airfare just to hear the NWO and drink a few pints of Pliny, of course.

[Voltron]

It looks like you guys had a great time. It would have almost been worth the airfare just to hear the NWO and drink a few pints of Pliny, of course.

During the day I had one Pliny draft, one Sierra Nevada Celebration draft, and one Fuller's London Pride hand-cask draft. Life is good.

The NWO will be at more meets and you will too, one of these days.

[Icarium]

apparently there was alot more to that modded UX-1 than I previously thought... I went home and read a few hours on it and realized that at the time I had no idea what I was hearing.

All the information on the site is pretty much 2 gens out of date too.

[jp11801]

It looks like you guys had a great time. It would have almost been worth the airfare just to hear the NWO and drink a few pints of Pliny, of course.

Mike, Al has cleanly vaulted over both our rigs with the SDS XLR Emm Labs combo really killer stuff and needs to be heard to be believed.

I did a bit of a comparison between Min's RS1 and my brown leathers, I almost can't believe these are the same headphones. The newer RS1s exhibit a congestion in the mids that is immediately noticeable if I were buying an RS1 today I would hunt down an older pair. I am not sure if the early black headbands are similar to the old brown ones but it would be worth checking out to avoid the collector upcharge.

I compared the GS1s to the hp2s, ps1s and rs1s and I just could not get into these. To me it seemed like Grado tried something new that just did not work out. I owned these for about a month and wanted to like them but between the tizzy highs and recessed mids it was a no go. I know some folks love them but they are not for me.

The PS1s, hearing them again made me miss the pair I sold. They have such great mids and treble and the BASS is outstanding if not overwhelming but it never clouds the other frequencies like you see with other cans. These are great headphones to have it you want to Rock out hard and slam the bass but still have a great listening experience. Now they in no way give you a balanced picture of the music but if you are always reaching for the bass knob on your car stereo these are the Grados for you.

I regret not taking the time to listen to Mins Zanden 300b k100 set up as it world class. This combo breaths like into the music and gives the k1000s the body they can lack with other set ups. It gives up just a bit in the area of dynamics and extension at the extremes of both frequencies but you'd be hard pressed to do hear better. I had the chance to spend a couple of hours with Min in San Francisco comparing the HD2 to the Zanden but I should have taken another listen. Although his meet was really social and it was hard to block out the yapping even with regular headphones.

The star of the meet was Neil's Singlepower E2 NWO combo driving the HE90s. This combo is so refined, smooth but has great detail, sense of space but my one and only quibble is the lack of attack at the leading edge. This is more a thing about my tastes than the E2 rig as you could probably dial in that sound with all the settings on that amp or with some well thought out tube rolling. I think I was the only one to feel this way though and if we voted it would have received best at meet. I would welcome the opportunity to hear the rig in a noise free setting as we probably only got a glimpse of it's potential. Neil probably has one of the better balanced amps for headphones built into the xlr outs of the NWO and will have a great time experimenting with balanced dynamic headphones with the NWO. The NWO out of the rear xlrs sounded better than the behemoth SS1. Although that amp could probably be tweaked a bit.