Norcal Mini-ish Meet impressions 8-9-08

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Below is the post from Headfi here is the link Norcal Mini-ish Meet impressions 8-9-08 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

Wow what a fun meet, thanks to Dan for opening his home to us all We had a great group of folks there that all shared a deep love of music and gear. It showed with lively discussion. I eneded up staying at Dans place when the group went to lunch so I could get some quite time listening done.

There was a ton of of top flight gear considering this was a mini meet. Once again even though I was there for 12 hours I still did not listen everything.

Eddie Current, a tale of three amps.

The Nautilus, this is one heck of an amp and is a bit of a swiss army knife. It drives single ended, balanced and speakers (8 watts at 8ohms) that are sensitive. Great sounding amp and given its flexibilty could be a cool solution for folks that want one amp to do it all. Of the three amps there it ranked third sonically but not by alot. It is not as refined as the balancing act or the hd2 but it is as good as or better than most amps I have heard in the 2k-3k price range. This amp could be configured for WE 437 driver tubes and that could make it give the BA and HD2 a better run for the money. Craig indicated that the jury was still out on his producing this amp.

The Balancing Act, what can I say I love this amp. Where it beats the Nautilus and potentially the HD2 is tone. This amp has some of the most realistic tone I have heard. Top to bottom it produces great sound but the midrange is really sweet. I really think he has hit a home run with this amp. It is a preamp/headamp so for speakers a power amp will be needed. Given its strenghts with 650, rs1s, audio technica ad2000s and every other headphone thrown at it yesterday it is a winner. We had the proto version that has a standard power supply and we found out that power supply is going to be upgraded in the production version. Also there was talk of some pretty cool case work on this amp.

HD2, well since I own it there is a bit of owner bias probably so I'll let others comment on their thoughts. Needless to say after a year of ownership I love this freakin amp.

KGSS, we had a DX version in the house and I loved it with the lamba pros just a great match. This is an great amp with a nice look and even better sound. I may prefer this sonincally to the BH or ES1 mainly as I am not a huge fan of the pentode sound and find this amp to be smoother in presentation. I am most likely the only person on the planet to feel this way so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Yamamoto HA-02, I may have treated this amp unfairly in the past. I have heard it with grado headphones and it was not a good match at all. With PS1s the bass was flabby and out of control and it did not fair too much better with rs1s. Now I used it today with the Audio Technica Ad2000s and it was a great match. This does not make a whole lot of sense as the AD are 40ohm and the grado are 32 ohm so you figure the same amp would work well with both. If you own AT headohones and need a cool looking small amp that sounds great you need to give this one a look.

Grado GS1000, I owned a pair that I bought directly after the New York meet and sold them a few months after getting them. This pair was better than I recall my old pair sounding. Mine had a tendancy to get hot on the top end but this pair was another story. Great balanced sound and when pushed did get hot/harsh on top. No sibilance to speak of the the mids were good not rs1 good but good. Mikeymad has a pair of these that has the mojo.

Audio Technics AD2000, this high end offering from AT is the Rodney Dangerfield of high end headphones, it just does not get the respect is deserves, IMHO. I have had these for a few weeks and I feel like they out perform the Senn 650s and my RS1s with my amp. They are very open sounding with a very accurate tone. They seem to be amp dependant and scale well rewarding you as you improve source and amp. They are also hard to find in the US. To get real world pricing on these you need to shop on lines stores in Japan.

Big props to Bigguy and Mrs Bigguy for the brownies and pecans. They are some of the nicest people I have met at meets and it is always a pleasure to see them.

Mikey thanks for the awesome beverages as well the whiskey and rye hit the spot yesterday!

thats all for now