Cavalli LG with some uber tubes. Code-X, Slants, and HD-800. The headphone in the middle was the best sounding with this setup. LG was fed by the Bricasti M1.

What impressed me most at the meet. Frank Cooter's single ended stat amp based on 845 tubes. The filaments glow like crazy.

Unfortunately, I don't think many people heard it.

On HDVD600/800. Very interesting...

Still think the Senn lines of amps meshes really well with HD800. Still bright, but has smooth refined quality and great staging with the balanced outputs (esp. using the HDVD800 built-in DAC or suitable DAC.)

Used iPhone out to HDVD600 and it was still rather good. Tells me something. I kind of think the HDVD600 isn't all that sensitive to DACs. The amp has a characteristic which is suited for the HD800. The iPhone 4 tends to be nasty and brittle sounding with the UERM (or being used as a source to other amps.) I sort of expected this, but not so much in the case. HD800 was still listenable via HDVD600 with iPhone 4 as source. The only major thing it lost in a major way against the built-in balanced DAC of the HDVD800 was the the imaging and depth of the stage.

This is both good and bad. Good is that whatever one throws as the source to HDVD600, it's going to sound more similar than different. Bad in that the amp doesn't scale as well as it should. Personally, I think it's a good thing given the price level. HD800 can be very difficult to build a system around, especially as we scale up.

Care to share the story of Frank Cooter's wife hearing the HD800 on the HDVD600 and her response to Sennheiser about the Eagles then later on the Levi?

Frank's 845 amp is one of the best tonal matches with the 009 but I still hear the 009's limitations everytime and this was no exception.  Still sounded flat and ethereal but tonal balance was more natural.  I always love Cooter's amps but there was a warmth and a slight compression in SS hurting air and overall clarity and vibrancy (call it timbral contrast if you like).  I suspect something upstream of the amp as his amps are always wonderful.

Bricasti is a difficult one to wrap one's head around.  On the one hand, it's probably one of the best DACs I've ever heard.  Great macro dynamic swings and impact, nice treble and bass timbre, good resolution, good air, no real strange tonal artifacts like peaks of death, etch, wooly bass bloom, sterile limp dick bass, etc.  Very clean and precise.  However, there were a few issues that stood out to me.  The two most obvious were the obvious sigma delta signature grain or lack of ladder/analog smoothness, and then the less than engaging mids that a re a bit pushed back relative to the extremes in FR.  The treble and bass had this big dynamic punch similar to the Mjolnir that some would be engaged by or others perhaps fatigued by depending on listener preferences.  So in the end, one of the best DACs I've ever heard, but not perfect.  I think MSB nails overall tonal balance and signature better but Bricasti gets more resolution and perhaps better air and imaging depending on the level of your MSB upgrades.  Note- I used Greed's preferred Minimum Apodizing filter 2 which I agreed with cycling through for brief impressions.  Linear 1 made the treble and ringing worse than anything I've ever heard on a PWD of any sort or firmware.

Sadly, it seems many folk didn't make it past the vendors down to our room or Cooter's unless they had to use the restroom.  Their loss.

Mithra, the sun god, shines upon this lucky fellow.

 

So Marv, what did you really think of the Sonett next to the Stratus? Your Sith powers were clouding my vision through the force.