SoCal Mini Meet June 23rd 2018

I don't know if it's yours or @Mdkaler 's but I have a power strip that I think belongs to one of you.

 

So, on the actual headphone gear that we had on hand, and in a pretty incomplete and random sort of way:

The setup that quietly stole the show for me was Max's Modi Multibit, Saga, Jotunheim, and HD6xx. I certainly don't put myself out there as a trusted-ear caliber critical listener in the first place and especially as I was semi-coherent by the time we got to the actual listening I won't try to explain exactly why that rig sounded as good as it did, but I thought it sounded Holy-Smokes good. In casual/generic terms I just remember the sound as clear, full and immersive without committing any major sins and with the cans being very respectably comfortable. Enjoying that set up as much as I did while staring at my rig sitting on the same desk I suddenly became aware of just how much I'd 'invested' in headphone gear and from that quick and casual comparison I'll say that it's funny how much further the first $1600 dollars will go than the last $6,000 when putting a rig together.

I've read the Campfire/LH thread and that's a shame. Bill's modded 800's running through a phone and a Geekout (GO2?) sounded Really great. Very clear and refined. Larry, dude, make geekouts and collect money. Seriously. The 2.5 balanced connection on my DPX1 broke and rather than get it fixed I ordered an iBasso something something balanced portable amp that I hope will sound anywhere as good when paired with the phone/ipod/dap .

Rian Johnson is a bum. Screw that guy.

Apologies to Neogeo as I never got as far as to hear the Hugo2/iCanPro that I'm sure I would have enjoyed. I wish I had done that and dropped the ball in not taking a minute from hosting to spend a few minutes with that setup. That and cooking five times as much food as was eaten are probably my two regrets on the day.

Other than Bills modded 800's and Max's 6xx's I think that the only other phones I tried on were Wappo's HifiMan Edition X. I didn't even have them plugged in to anything but from a comfort standpoint I'm remembering those as a 10. Extremely comfortable. The only headphones that I've tried on so far that I would say are as comfortable as the EFlows.

I had on hand the my own Teak Auteurs with Auteur pads, EFlows, and Beyer T5p gen 2s.

On the EFlows, Bill (an HD800 user) thought my pair was the best he'd heard of that model but still felt staging was a weak point for them. Paul found the mids to be sucked out. I still dig 'em well enough that I'll be letting the Auteurs go. On the EFlows, the mids are recessed and you do hear it when going back and forth between those and the dynamic Auteurs but, when not doing A/B I don't notice the recessed mids and as the stage did scale up on these cans in the transition from Gungnir Multibit/Mjo2 to Yggdrasil A2/Af enough that I don't miss the additional stage of Bill's 800's, especially as the 800s and Auteurs have trade offs of their own. I Really enjoy these phones as an 'all day' listen.

On the Teak Auteurs, and on those trade offs, after a little more time with them I find the sound to at times be 'crisp' with instruments in some places getting to the point of being a bit steely. Bill seemed to know what I was referring to and Paul didn't disagree but also mentioned that he was able to tame that aspect with the Loki that we had on hand and is now considering buying a used set in spite of my price not changing after he dumped a Cherry Coke in to their case. I still find the Auteurs to be wonderful and agree with Paul that the character of the bass especially, the nuance that can come through in the lower registers is Reeeeeally nice. I haven't spent extensive time with other flagship cans but still, the Auteurs seem like really nice cans to me over all, especially if a slight adjustment via EQ can take that edge off of the treble (which isn't always in play to begin with).

With the Beyer's, I've only spent time with one set of Beyer's and haven't heard them as the ear splitting treble killers that I've seen that brand described as here on SBAF. I think I see Bill listening to them through his GeekOut in one of the pics from the day but the only opinion I remember getting on them was from Wappo who seemed to agree that they aren't treble killers the way Beyer is often assumed to be. The sound of those Beyer's lacks the clarity and dynamics of either the EFlows or the Autuers but these are closed cans at less than half the price of either. Ed felt like my 'mod' was noteworthy but I'm not sure that sticking coffee filters in to the pads made much difference other than letting me call myself a modder in a very tongue in cheek sort of way. I did find the original pads on the Beyers to be very uncomfortable so I switched to a pair of Brainwavz sheepskins which make the phones very comfortable.

I think that's enough for me. I think Bill planned on posting impressions that I look forward to. At the end of the day, I agree with what a couple of others have said here. Who cares about the headphones, I enjoyed the chance to hang out with every person who was there and the headphones mostly just provided an excuse.

 

It's mine, you can keep it as a meet power strip.

 

Oops. start of the week was crazy for me. I finally have some free time now to start typing up some words. So... ahem, some impressions:

Aficionado + Mr. Speakers Ether Flow: maybe it's the amp, or it's Yggdrasil A2 v2, or Thor personally injecting that system with his best dose of thunder/electricity, etc... Whichever the case, this was actually the one (and first) time I didn't want to rip this headphone off of my head after 10 seconds. Tonality sounded right, maybe a bit shouty (I'm just super sensitive to shouti-ness though), but I couldn't detect anything else that was wrong, and I did try to push some of the worse edge cases through the setup like Tears in Heaven, Hotel California, etc.... Super harsh and edgy recordings still sounded bad but they weren't annoying. Beyond that, staging was a bit lacking, but I'm used to HD800, and planars all sound like they're in my head anyway (cue the angry ortho mob?). Transparency was good down to low mid, at which point, the headphone sounded a bit constrained. It was hitting low notes better than HD800 but there was a sense of things getting a bit congested/soft/pillowy (cue pillow talk!). But seriously, that's me nitpicking. And I could only nitpick this system because it pulled me in long enough for me to try and find faults with it, of which it had very few! I can see why @BillOhio really likes this setup, and... I do, too!

If you're reading this, Dan, please take note that not everyone here hates your headphones. I think this one was very well done. Good job!

Modi Multibit + Saga + Jot + HD6XX: some interesting/weird phase thing going on, as @Mdkaler noted at the meet. But beyond the phase experiment going on, I really like this setup. Saga helped the Schiit Peak(tm) that's so pervasive in most Schiit gears, especially the Jot and Modi Multibit. I'm not sure which revision of Jot this one was but I did own two Jots that sounded pretty different from one another. But I also had a new-ish Modi Multibit and even the smoother of the two Jots I owned couldn't help smooth out the Schiit Peak(tm) in that particular Modi Multibit. I couldn't detect any peak here. Well done!

Some comments on the phase experiment: to me, when reversing phase, it sounded like certain songs had the soundstage inverted, so instead of sounding like things are focused right in the center and in front of me, they would sound more... ethereal, or more "elsewhere" per se. On the HD800, though, the effect is even more interesting: regular phase sounded like proper center imaging with depth and stuff, and then reversed phase sounded about the same but this time, it sounded like sound were coming from the back of my head! So with the HD800, instead of hearing a weird "out there" effect, I heard most of the songs sounding like the soundstage was pushed to the rear instead of to the front.

@PTS's HE-560: treble still a bit harsh for me. Tonality was good/close to neutral though. I think if you fired up that MCTH, it would have helped the 560 quite a lot! Still, it's cool revisiting the HE-560, a headphone I owned a while ago, so... thanks for bringing it, man!

@PTS's friend's 45 tube amp thing: speaker taps sounded amazeballs with this amp. Thick, full, lush, easy, but with high transparency and 3D imaging. Headphone out was kinda average for me on the thing, but the speaker taps tho. Dang! I could tell this was a very well-tuned piece of gear. Wouldn't dare to ask how much it cost, and it probably wouldn't matter anyway because this thing obviously is very lovingly cared for. Thanks for bringing this as well!

@neogeosnk's Topping DAC and iFi iCan setup: I thought the Topping DAC was a bit bright, sabre-like, and kinda cloudy sounding on the bottom with my HD800 (God knows why, really), but I wouldn't necessarily say it's a bad DAC. The way you have this set up with the iFi iCan and paired with the HD6XX made me feel like there was some good synergy/combobinator/PRaT (insert random audiophile buzzword here) going on. Good job! The iFi iCan by itself is a pretty interesting amp, too. I think it's a bit on the lean/weak side on the bottom, but it's smooth sounding and really doesn't do anything bad in the treble that I could pick up, and so for some reason, it was a good pairing with the Topping DAC! It was good even with my GOV2+, I thought. Thanks for reminding me that it isn't about how much $$$$ we throw into the hobby, it's more about the end result!

Rest of meet: great people, great company, fantastic food. I pity those who missed out on the thick, phat, juicy, mellow burger masterpieces that @BillOhio cooked up for us. Coupled with the very abundant supply of... eh, beverages that everyone else brought and it was awesome! I honestly didn't spend much time with the gears because you guys were such awesome company! Thank you all for coming by and making the meet happen!

@Ringingears, man, you really did miss out on some good burgers. Please make sure to make the next meet!

Also, I agree. All they had to do was fudging give Luke Skywalker a light sabre, add some robots, had him kick arse, and collect two billion dollars! #MakeStarWarsGreatAgain

 

I think Jay's 45 amp was built for a little over $2k.