Head-Fi Bay Area Fall Meet: November 7, 2015

^I have been topped! PLUS: your overall room set-up (audio gear, screens, height-adjustable desk, and TOTL chair) is a topper for sure.

EDIT: Though I did blow up an engine 1/2-way to a SoCal meet by driving too fast. (Guess I was excited to get down there.) Had to get towed to a U-Haul, hook the car up to a big truck, rent a van, make the meet, drive back up to the U-Haul and then tow the car back to just have it scrapped. The meet was the only thing I was going down there for. Guess you topped me by flying.

 

Yes I will bring my macbook, but be warned I only have Shaquille O'Neal, but they are all high definition files so the sound quality is excellent and will give all the attendees exactly what they need to properly evaluate gear.

 

Ha! I think driving down there is the crazier thing! The flight was cheap and a hotel shuttle away from the venue. Driving is a bit more time/money consuming. Especially if you go as fast as one needs to blow up an engine The only thing I've topped you by flying being 30,000 ft above.

You're welcome to come over anytime and listen. R.E.M. - New Adventures in Hi-Fi on the turntable right now.

 

You'll get no complaints from me. "Inside the NBA" starring Dr. O'Neal is possibly my favorite show on TV.

Also I'm not sure if @drfindley is coming but he's got a external HD I left at his place full of hi-rez and DSD files.

 

I'm not, I'll be in SB. Let me know how I can get your HD back.

 

I'll just grab it next time I see you. It'll give me an excuse to drive down and listen to Studio .

 

Jude won't be there FWIW, and it was started on Head-fi as a mini meet.

Plus Will @ Massdrop is a known pyrate supporter.

And last but not least, I'd love to see you (and I'm sure others feel the same). You've been too much of a hermit at recent meets, bro!

 

Something came up and I won't be able to make it Saturday, hopefully you can connect with a dac-less amp there.

I'm sure everyone there will be eagerly eyeing your big black DAC, so hopefully you should have no problems sliding it into a willing amp.

 

I was lucky enough to share a room with Bill (the mod god) today at the meet.

This was the rare meet where we had almost zero MOT participation outside of Massdrop who hosted. It was a nice change of pace from the Head-Fi sponsored Can Jam meets that feel like 80+% MOTs.

I had a lot of fun talking with everyone, especially Velvetx, Bill P, NoStream and the Massdrop guys. NoStream's rig (which I used to own) was easily the class of the meet. It is very hard to beat a properly driven 009 rig.

I also finally started coming around to the Black Widow. It sounded pretty good out of Yggdrasil today.

The only real negative was the nightmare of parking the in the financial district on a Saturday. Other than that, fun meet.

 

I'm glad to hear you like the Crack as much as I do/did. It kind of feels like coming in to a warm room after a cold night. The high-end detail might not be there, but the sound is just so comforting and pleasant that you don't really care. You just relax and listen.

Also, I'm glad to hear you liked the Oppo HA-1. I know the Sabre DAC isn't a SBAF favorite, but I've lived with the Sabre driven Oppo BDP-105 since it was released and I've never been tempted to sell it, even when I have Yggdrasil in the house. When you listen to a good Sabre DAC back to back with one of the Schiit multibits it doesn't sound quite as good, but once you take it home it is quite livable.

Thanks again for all the help loading and unloading, man!

See you at the next meet.

 

Yeah, I dove directly into the big Staxes... so I'll post what @velvetx missed.

Before you read the following, please consider that... I am an honest asshole. I won't mince words to make something seem more beautiful than it is. And my ears are very tinned, so please please please... do take my opinions with a huge grain of salt, and please do disagree! I know my taste has at least shifted from being slightly dark now to slightly bright after getting the HD800, so... please also take that into account.

Stax SR-009 + KGSSHV + Schiit Yggdrasil: this was TMoney's old setup, I think. I have heard many SR-009 setups up to this point, and... all of them kind of sound different in their own ways. Well, this one also had his own character according to my ears. It had an easy-going, smooth tone, rather than the sharp/fast transient I have heard in some other setups. That doesn't mean the 009 sound "slow" in this setup, but that it sounded like there was more sustain throughout the entire audible range. There was the usual midrange-centric tone still, but... it didn't sound overly sharp or bright anymore. On the other hand, though, I feel like there was some small lack of ultimate transparency and detail retrieval, and I know Yggdrasil should give more details than this. Soundstage was also likewise just "okay". Not overly big or spacious, or airy, or transparent, so there was like a sense of "compression". BUT... it was very easy to listen to. Probably the ultimate level of "easy" there. I can see why TMoney loved that setup. I actually like it as well. However, having gotten used to the modded HD800 now, I feel like a snob who wants just that extra bit of transparency, detail retrieval, and soundstage. So... please take into account that my taste has gone from being slightly dark-ish to something that's probably slightly brighter, and higher contrast than the 009 now. In comparison, I'd say... my reference modded HD800 rig would sound a wee bit more V-shaped than this 009 rig. And maybe that V-shaped signature is what's causing me to say the HD800 is more transparent, higher resolution and has bigger soundstage. It's all about relative differences here. I swear I'd be very happy if I owned that 009 rig, and maybe I'd look at the HD800 rig as being a bit too hyper in comparison.

CEE TEE's (or my) modded HD800 + Eddie Current Black Widow or my DIY amp + Schiit Gungnir Multibit or Schiit Yggdrasil: this was the rig I used to compare the Yggdrasil and Gungnir Multibit again. I have had an "on and off again" relationship with Yggdrasil. Hearing it out of multiple rigs, with headphones I wasn't familiar with. This time, though, I feel like I knew the rig well enough for some (semi)critical comparisons. Please note that I'm assuming the 2 DACs output at the same level out of their single-ended outputs. And that I'm using single-ended only, as I didn't have access to a balanced amp. With that said, the DACs come off as basically very similar. Yggdrasil to my ears sounds... a bit more forward, or in-my-face, or... there is simply a higher contrast between sounds that are closer to me, and sounds that are further away. Gungnir Multibit in comparison tends to have a more laid-back, or relaxed presentation. Maybe that's why some say Gungnir Multibit is warmer? This is still a very slight difference. Overall tonal balance and everything else sound actually very close to my ears. There's the signature Schiit "edginess" with both DACs, though since Yggdrasil is more up front, I think it can give the impression that Yggdrasil is brighter. I know I have made that mistake all this time on some other rigs, but now I can hear that it's really just something else. Also, this "contrast" gives Yggdrasil the ability to spotlight details better, as there is simply more levels of gradations (or... depth?) to the soundscape. Would have loved to explore this deeper if I had my own source and music, but... ah well. I always have next time.

Bonus round: what I think of the Eddie Current Black Widow:
So... I have heard the Black Widow quite a few times now, but always with headphones I wasn't familiar with, or DAC I knew, so... there's that. Finally I can sit down and have a concrete listen. IMO, BW is a very unique solid-state amp. It has the solid state sound with an "edge" to it, but also pretty good amount of warmth or "body" or "solidity" down on the bottom as well. I can't quite say it's bright, thin, or warm, or... "full"? I'd say, though, that it sounds like it contains all of the characters that would make most planar headphones sound awesome. The upper mids are a bit more present, but smoothed and kinda thinned out, so most popular planars (HiFiMAN HE series, or Audeze LCD series) with kinda thick mids would gain some clarity here, but without sounding too shouty. Bass is fuller, weighty, and more impactful, so this will compliment bass impact of some planars that may tend to sound thin (HE-6 comes to mind here). Last but not least, treble seems really sweetened and extended here, so any 8-10KHz peak can kiss it all goodbye! In fact, I found it an almost good fit with the modded HD800 as well, and probably it would be perfect with a DAC that's a bit fuller-sounding to counter-act the slightly thin upper mids. I can see why some like it it. Hell, I like it! Whenever Luis is done with my Code-X, I think I should hunt down a BW next. It's not gonna be my first choice for HD800, due to the thinness in the upper mids (unless you've got "voodoo" to fix the tonality?), but I'd love it with planars.

My Modded HD800 + Schiit Lyr 2 w/ LSST tubes + Schiit Bifrost Multibit: oh hey, this was actually... quite enjoyable! I think the LSST tubes are a good match with Lyr 2, taking away the edginess of the stock tubes and at the same time, giving it more control, tightness on the bottom. However, the top end of this system still lacked some amount of air for me, and the stock tuning was still quite apparent, so it made my HD800 dark and kinda peaky-sounding. Putting a Wyrd in the chain immediately remedied the darkness, so maybe it's DAC-dependent and Schiit made one too many sacrifices to fit Multibit into Bifrost? But either way, this was fairly enjoyable, and though not my top pick for HD800, I can probably see it being a good match for HD600/650 on the more affordable end of the spectrum. I know my modded HD600 sounded great on it.

We did a modded Wyrd impression comparison session, thing... and of the many who were subjected to the "experiment", not a single person said they couldn't notice the difference. This was with Yggdrasil. Now, the funny thing is... I've found that the mod itself can be done in a different way that can either cause the Wyrd to sound brighter (benefits the Bifrost Multibit tremendously) or warmer (makes Yggdrasil sound smoother, though may not be a good thing?). So... what to do? I'll post a thread on what I've done, what I think will make a difference in the tuning, and then let you guys decide on what to do with the information. But please note: this is not scientific, may not be measurable, could very well be placebo (but at least 10 people have confirmed it subjectively now), and it may in fact just be more distortion. So yeah...

But... my thanks go to everyone who participated (or let me do this crazy stunt. Hahaha)! I'll reveal the "Wyrd felt mod" soon.

Feedbacks on my modded HD800 has been mixed: I'm including this here so those who are considering my HD800 mod will have more data point, and I'm not going to hide the negative comments. So what are the negatives? Well, some said that the mod itself may have killed the extra sharpness or edge that the HD800 itself can impart on instruments, so some instruments sound less impressive (or dead?) to the listener compared to stock. In addition, while the brightness has been reduced, the "presence" region has also been reduced, and as a result, the HD800 can sound either too soft, too distant, or not "there". And one participant (who is used to HD650) said that the mod itself was still too bright out of Gungnir Multibit + BW. Pretty much everyone liked the modded headphone with the modded Bottlehead Crack, though (which I didn't get to listen to, but you can probably read velvetx's impressions above?). In all, I'd say... I really appreciate these feedbacks. They help me grow my tuning. Except in this case, I'm actually happy with the way the headphone turned out, so I won't be doing further tunings on the mod. I'll leave the tuning to those who would like to explore different paths to whatever I've done thus far. But for now, I prefer to mod/tune my amp and DAC rather than the headphones themselves. So... with that said, I'll still post the negative comments here for those who are considering my mods to take into account. I don't think I have "fixed" anything with the HD800 at all. I simply tilted it in a direction that I think makes it more listenable to me. And if you'll allow me this little bit of arrogance, I'll take my time to process photos, and write up a guide for Bill-P's HD800 mod v.1.5 in the next few days.

And that's it for all of my impressions. I ended up talking to people a lot, especially 3X0. Really enjoyed this one meet, and hope to see the same gang again soon! Maybe December meet?

(Psh... 3X0 has an SR-Omega, so I think we should rope him into the December meet!)

Special thanks to velvetx, recarcar and the guys for helping me unload/load gears. Seriously, I owe you guys probably more than donuts at this point.

 

I enjoyed reading your impressions, Bill.

We all have our different frames of reference based on what rig we use as a daily driver.

Our brains seem to adjust to what we live with and we judge everything else in relation to that reference.

--

FWIW @gepardcv let me borrow his susy Dynalo the day after the meet. IMO it easily trounces every other dynamic amp that was there on Saturday. It is a shame most people will never hear this amp as it is DIY-only.

I'd post more detailed impressions but I really don't like the idea of dumping on other user's rigs. The last thing you ever want to do is discourage people in this hobby.

 

Well, I'd say... you can either be polite and not mention something at all, or be ruthlessly honest, and just mention what you personally think about gears.

I personally have heard a Dynahi before, and while I wouldn't know how good/bad it is relative to other gears, as I still need to do some comparisons to tell, I think it is a pretty good amp. Certainly doing the "transparency" part quite well with the Sony R10 that was attached to it.

 

I'll invite @gepardcv to our next meet. If he can't make it I'll try and pick up the Dynalo and bring it. It is worth hearing.