Proof that SBAF can still be a great and surprising community

Discussion in 'The Meeting Place' started by brencho, Nov 26, 2017.

  1. brencho

    brencho Friend

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    Despite recent and occasional flare-ups of controversy, disagreement and sometimes bitterness, I continue to be amazed by kindness and generosity of people here. First a huge huge thank you to @Mdkaler (who I'm yet to meet IRL even) for meeting up with @CEE TEE in the Bay Area at like 11pm one night over the Thanksgiving weekend and driving a EC Zana Deux down to SoCal for me. This is a pretty huge "going above and beyond" type of thing that really surprises me, and I hope to repay the kindness soon in the form of music and food. Another big thank you to @Melvillian who stopped by my house today to let me borrow a small box full of tubes to test on the ZD. At least I was able to fan the flames of his vinyl dreams with some music, and hope we can do it again soon with more time on our hands. Feel free to come by any time.

    Add to this the regular meetups and chats with other pals like @Bill-P @Marvey and @zerodeefex and occasionally @shaizada and @LFF and @JK47 when they step away from work/studying for music, pho, or whatever. I could easily name dozens of other people (like bay area buddies @philipmorgan @TMoney and @bazelio with his waxed chest and who i talk to way too often according to my wife). It can be a great community of people if we take the time and energy to build and maintain friendships, provide help and then be surprised by crazy kindness. Controversy is inevitable, as is bitterness, apparently, when the stakes are so low, and I'm not going to comment on the validity of controversies because they are varied and multi-determined. But its the human side that keeps me coming back and renews my faith in communities like this in spite of difficulties.

    Apologies for the public expressions of gratitude which make lots of us uneasy and nervous but it felt warranted under the circumstances and probably long overdue. My hand was forced in light of mdkaler and melvillian's totally amazing help this weekend.
     
  2. songmic

    songmic Gear cycler East Asia edition

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    This post moved me so much I had to punch a wall to feel manly again (no sarcasm intended).

    Also made me ask myself: what have I done so far for SBAF? Of course living on the other side of the Pacific hasn't made it easily for me to partake in meets, loaners and other activities, but that's no excuse for not contributing to this community that really helped me on my journey to sonic nirvana on a personal level, and more importantly, made me feel belong. Even though I've never met most of you guys in person, what would I do without you?

    Sorry if I got a little carried away. If any of you friends ever get to visit Seoul and would like a nice mini-meet and a dinner together, I'm game.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2017
  3. Abhishek Chowdhary

    Abhishek Chowdhary Friend

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    Similarly in this part of world where audio gear is still a niche , @Koth Ganesh has generously offered gear in the past for audition. HD650, HD800, Bifrost , Jotunheim to name a few.
     
  4. bazelio

    bazelio Friend

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    My kid glances at my phone message notifications and loves to say "Hey, it's Brenchooooo oh oh ohoh". But we really need to see Sally's reaction after LAAS next year when we blow past her into the living room carrying snail speakers. You can tell her I made you do it.
     
  5. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    OK, I gave that a try. Half an hour later I'm still sucking my fist and weeping. Is that what's supposed to happen?

    My active interest in audio has diminished to the point where I could probably live without an audio forum. But hey, during those moments when I think this place has gone crazy, I still know I'll back the next day. I like my audio with spoons-full of genuine (rather than fantasy) technical knowledge, a dose of humour, and a wee bit of crazy. And if people around here are not always nice, well, that fits too, because neither am I.
     
  6. DigMe

    DigMe Friend

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    I’m gonna make it back at some point!
     
  7. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    This place and Changstar have helped me to get through some tough times. Music has always been like a medicine to me. Getting to know a lot of people here and IRL has been great. And has taken me from an O.K. amp and K701's to sound I thought only speakers could produce. In the end most everyone has always been generous with their time and knowledge. Thanks. I think what @spwath is doing is a great example of SBAF at it's best.

    You now have permission to get weepy for exactly 30 seconds. Then The Godfather will slap you in the face and tell you to act like a man! :p
     
  8. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

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    Ask not what SBAF can do for you, but what you can do for SBAF!
     
  9. Arun Kumar

    Arun Kumar Friend

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    I have @Koth Ganesh 's Lh Labs Pulse XFI dac on loan and it sounds friggin' awesome with my 6XX ! Thank you :)
     
  10. Vansen

    Vansen Gear Master (retiring)

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    Man... that ZD has been around. Here it was in my apartment in Georgia:

    108C8B20-A44D-4932-B9A8-583ED3BF4459.jpeg

    I hope you get more use out of it than I did. It’s a lovely amp.
     
  11. Mdkaler

    Mdkaler Friend

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    @brencho Oh wow you don't have to. I had the trip planned anyway. Hope you enjoy it!
     
  12. brencho

    brencho Friend

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    That's awesome man!

    And speaking of which, I sold pretty much all of my headphone gear a while back (except the now-also-gone Code-X and Andromedas for on-the-go commuting) and @Marvey basically lent me gear in waves so I could still listen to headphones at night! The list is endless but over time included -- his socal-sun-baked-Jotunheim, MCTH, ZDT Jr, a Gungnir Multibit and Modi Multibit to compare, etc etc. Like WTF people who does that. Awesome people, that's the f**k who.
     
  13. Arun Kumar

    Arun Kumar Friend

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    In my case, I hadn't heard what SBAF considers a good dac or amp before. I auditioned Grace m920 briefly a couple of months back and din't like it. It sounded thin with my 6XX and assumed the difference b/w good & bad gear is mostly about the last 5% technicalities and mostly about sound preference. This was reinforced by forums and review websites which overly praise any given gear that I had, without being sufficiently critical of them and calling them usually as 'punching about their weight class'. Those reviews might very well be true if they had been reviewing a ton of poor gear; I don't want to judge. Now, I am just sorry I relied on such reviews and based my purchase decision on them.

    After using the Geek pulse xfi for the past few days I see that the difference b/w my gear and a better gear is significantly larger than 5%. This is just with my 6XX connected to head amp (single ended) built into the Geek pulse. I can only imagine the difference grow bigger once I receive the ZDT jr.

    I am also beginning to understand (esp because of SBAF) that building a synergistic system is much better than having an uneven system where poor components just bottleneck the whole chain. I have stopped being excited about every deal that I see in MD or elsewhere and (hopefully) started being critical of the products and mostly being just patient and not click the 'buy' button. It's just awesome that SBAF shits on the products that deserves to be shit on and over time all bad products get exposed. The compromise is that, SBAF hasn't / won't review a ton of gear because the forum members seem to have a strong chain and don't cycle through products without a reason.

    Having said that there are a couple of suggestions I which would help me at SBAF.

    Separate product impression from discussion page

    The first time SBAF was relevant to the product I wanted to buy was when I bought my HD6xx and there were 50+ pages of 650 related content here. But that was also the pain point. Being totally new to SBAF back then and not knowing who's who, it was so difficult to understand the big picture simply because of the lack of structure. Now having spent a decent amount of time here, I am getting used to such fluidity, but isn't that the bad part? Even now if I have to get a quick impression on, say the Black Widow, I would have to rummage through a lot of dialog to find out what it all means.

    A bit more patience
    From what I observe this community functions by establishing good reference points (like 650 is good, NOS is good, but is not for everybody etc) and trusts members who either help set those ref. points, those who compared products critically against those ref points, or have been here long enough and brought value through other means. There's also a healthy dose of skepticism on new products.

    Sometimes the general culture of skepticism overextends and turns into possible aggression ( 'possible' because, it's really hard to capture the tone of chatter in a forum post ). For eg. when I asked if someone had tried out pairing the HE560 with the zdt-jr one of the answers din't add much value and just pointed out I was a Rando. Once again, I know it's hard to get tone of voice over text. In retrospect, I should have framed my question better and should have pointed out that in LBM impression thread there was good feedback on pairing with the 560 and why there was a disconnect. After all, accepting the occasional burns and moving on puts the F in SBAF, right? So, I'm all good and am looking fwd to spending a lot of time here!
     
  14. jexby

    jexby Posole Prince

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    my hopeful favorite day of SBAF lore is when me and @Koth Ganesh eat indian food for weeks on end and listen to tube amps together.
    can we start a GoFundMe campaign to pay for my airline ticket to India please? :punk:
     
  15. Koth Ganesh

    Koth Ganesh Friend

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    Where do I contribute? Link, please \/
     
  16. jexby

    jexby Posole Prince

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    dude stole my fav avatar and still respekt him to death. one day- the minds shall meet, drink, eat.
     
  17. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    I contributed Koth Ganesh.

    Well... I introduced him to Changstar!

    :sail:
     
  18. Melvillian

    Melvillian Friend

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    @brencho and today you poured gasoline on the flames of my vinyl dreams. Thanks for showing me what a good source sounds like
     

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