Hugo TT. Used as DAC/amp combo.

Amp section isn't bad. Has balls to drive difficult planars. Overall sound is warm maybe slighty gooey. Resolution is mediocre. Microdynamics slightly lacking on the cusp of being good. Almost a good unit... For $4500, this very much is not worth it. In some respects, worse than Hugo

Oh I forgot. After 10 minutes, digital fatigue started to set it despite warm tone.

In closing, this is sad. We can put together reference sounding DAC and amp combos for $800. Now we get multi thousand dollar pieces...

I don't know any of Chord products, but it looks like there an overwhelming hype on these. Even if the sound was top notch, I could'nt cope with this childish design (flashy colors of skittles' inlays, duh ?) and the price asked.

Ali

Hugo TT. Used as DAC/amp combo. Listened to a few tracks I was familiar with.

Amp section isn't bad. Has balls to drive difficult planars. Overall sound is warm maybe slighty gooey. Resolution is mediocre. Microdynamics slightly lacking on the cusp of being good. Almost a good unit... For $4500, this very much is not worth it. In some respects, worse than Hugo

Oh I forgot. After 10 minutes, digital fatigue started to set it despite warm tone.

In closing, this is sad. We can put together reference sounding DAC and amp combos for $800. Now we get multi thousand dollar pieces...

Interesting, thanks for another data point. I really liked the TT, did not listen to the little one.  The price is hard to swallow and the look/lights are atrocious.  I did enjoy speaking to Rob Watts.

Would love to have both the TT and Yggdrasil to listen to at home. 

6) Stax-Sigma : It's the best estat I've ever heard. Definitely better than their newer and more expensive siblings such as 007 and 009. Yes, Sigmas are also ethereal-sounding headphone, but I feel they are just... right. Unlike other estat headphones except HE90, I don't sense any weirdness that stemmed from ethereal-sounding of estats. It is hard to describe but they do this sound 'correct.' If I were to buy, I will prob try buy one of these.

These things must really improve with amplification, but with my T1 they were the weirdest sounding stat' I ever owned.

Ultra, it was the foam Milos used. He used closed-cell foam, I think. Today he got some open-cell foams and tried them out. We finally got to hear the R10 sounding holographic and big. Definitely bigger soundstage than the HD800 for sure. Nice trick. But it measured like...

The measurements were made with a make-shift and weird baffle, but we got the general idea.

c/p from HF and then some CS stuff after:

MrSpeakers Ether: I liked this quite a bit.  My typical complaint with most planars is that they sound closed in and congested.  These were one of the few that didn't (others being the Abyss and original Paradox).  The sound was airy, the soundstage was a nice size, and the mids were neutral.  They sounded kind of like an ortho driver with more of a lean towards electrostats.  These were a little light on the bass, but overall a clean and neutral headphone.  Also very comfortable.  This is my favorite headphone by Dan thus far and one of my favorite orthos.

HiFiMan HE1000: I have to admit I was pretty underwhelmed.  I was expecting these to impress me but I didn't hear anything special.  They look much better in person than in photos, but they did feel a little cheap.  For that matter, so did the rest of the chain...the scroll wheel on the portable player often took ~7 clicks just to register once, and the pot on the big amp was smooth like a normal pot but sounded like it was a stepper as I could clearly hear jumps in the volume level and couldn't really get the level I wanted.  There were a number of HE1000s there but I only listened to the single ended pair from the big amp.  Like the Ether, it sounded like a planar that was stepping towards electrostats.  There wasn't a ton of impact like a lot of other orthos, and it didn't have the detail I was expecting from a lighter diaphragm.  The soundstage also seemed off...instead of being able to pinpoint sounds from different areas around the head, the headstage on these seemed like a rectangle over your face without much separation.  Almost like listening in mono but with that center image stretched out to your ears if that makes sense.  Overall pretty neutral response.  One person told me he had very similar impressions to mine but then he tried one of the other HE1000s and they sounded completely different.  Fang said they all sound the same though so who knows.  My impressions of this headphone really didn't match what I expected to hear from a "nano" diaphragm, so I asked Fang how thick the diaphragm was and he said "I can't tell you."  I guess it's on the nanoscale, but that could mean anything.  It sounded more like 3,000-7,000 nm thick though so maybe the nano thing is to generate some buzz.

Riva Turbo X: These definitely deserve the attention they're starting to garner.  Very convenient and well thought out design, you can tell most of these guys have probably been doing this stuff for a while now.  For being so small it has no business sounding as big and good as it does.  It threw me off guard the first time I heard it because it didn't seem possible.  I guess this is what happens when that application gets designers that are most concerned with the sound quality instead of marketing, etc.

Abyss: I listened to purrin's modded set and they sounded better than before.  The treble was a lot cleaner sounding and strings sounded much more 'right' than they do on the stock Abyss.  I had a theory going in about the "speaker like" presentation/bass that this headphone is known for and pretty much verified it in my mind today.  It seems everybody listens to the Abyss with a partial, very weak seal (the designers even encourage this) and I think this is a huge contributor to the speaker-like stuff.  I spent my whole demo kind've pushing the cups in and pulling them out so that I could compare a full seal to the normal seal in rapid succession.  With the partial seal, as with most electrostats and orthos, you get more mid bass kick and less sub bass extension; with the full seal you get a more linear bass response.  This is nothing new so it didn't really surprise me, but there was one other t hing that had a surprising result from the different seals: soundstage.  With the full seal, you get a normal headphone soundstage, though these suffer a little from the "3 blob" effect (left/center/right without much fleshing out in between).  With the partial seal, the center of the soundstage basically disappears and you get a "2 blob" headstage with much more crosstalk than a normal headphone.  So ya, definitely "speaker like".  These would be a nice upgrade over the HE1000 if they lowered the price by offering it with a normal or no cable, and implemented some of Marv's mods.  I'd wear them with a full seal, YMMV.

Had a good time chatting with people.  It was nice seeing everybody again, see you all at the next one.


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Unless that really was a bad HE1000, I've gotta say I'm fairly certain Fang is BSing us with the nano stuff.  I'm guessing by "nanoscale" they mean "less than 1 micron", and having heard headphones with various super thin diaphragms and having worked with the stuff directly myself in experiments I can say "no way."  Super thin diaphragms don't sound shitty like that.  It would have been ultra resolving.  I tried to say it in a nice way on HF, but I think he's trying to generate buzz with all the nano talk since that's all the rage in pop culture today.  I also don't even think a <1 micron diaphragm would survive in a planar without tearing easily.  His response to my question was weird, I don't know what he has to lose by saying the spec.

Bill thanks for measuring the R10s with various foams.  What I forgot to mention is that the R10 actually has 2 sets of foam: one ring over the ports and one ring that goes between the frame and outer cup.  Like I was telling you at the meet, by changing the foam on that inner ring above the ports you're able to alter the size of the soundstage.  I think messing with the outer foam ring will give different results in the bass and it wouldn't surprise me if that ring is the biggest contributor to determining what makes up a "bass light" or "bass heavy" R10.  Unfortunately, my R10 has no outer ring right now (all disintegrated) and so they roll off hard in the bass, which is why they sounded a little bright to me with all the foam setups.  Day 1 with the closed cell foam, a lot of people were talking about how the R10 sounded closed in.  Day 2 a lot of people were amazed by how open they sounded.    Anyways, I have some machinable urethane foam here and am talking to another R10 owner about measuring his outer ring so I can restore them fully.

You guys have all been doing legitimately good work modifying your headphones for better performance.  Marv has improved the Abyss a lot from stock, Mike has made the HD800 listenable, Bill really surprised me with both the LCD2 and Z7 linearity, and origami ( ) made his HE-6 sound more open with a much more pleasant treble.  I really like seeing when people DIY their rigs with more thought than simple tube rolling, cable swaps and boutique fuses.  Was nice seeing you all, but now I feel like a jerk because I didn't realize how many of you were actually at the meet and on CS pretty regularly.  They need to put usernames on badges next time in very large font.