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My turn to play

CMonster

CMonster

Well-Known Member
I've never been much of a headphone guy and mainly just use them as a practical way to block out distractions at work where we no longer even have cubes (currently using Audéo PFE 122s). That said, I did enjoy reading all the headphone/amp/DAC comparison threads posted by PaulyT, Walls, and The DirtMerchant, and thought it was really cool that they were willing to ship equipment to each other for evaluation.

Not too long ago, a friend over at AVS suggested that I host a KC headphone get-together:
I'd like to proposition a headphone comparison g2g. Chuck, I'm throwing your name out there to see if you might be interested in hosting it in the next couple months? See what I did there? Called you out? You've got a great space and I hope some of the other KC guys can experience it too. This might be a good opportunity?!?! Plus I can get you and d_c to connect and keep working on getting you to turn those end tables into nearfield subs!!!
Click to expand...

(The guy who posted that, Archaea, is a bass fanatic and he keeps trying to convince me to turn the two aluminum-clad end tables in the HT into subs. It's not gonna happen.)

Intrigued, I contacted Pauly and Walls to see if they'd be willing to ship me anything and they graciously agreed. I'm now in possession of a LittleDot II++ with four sets of tubes, SCHIIT A2, and SCHIIT Bifrost courtesy of Walls. Scheduled for delivery today are Pauly's modded Denon D5000 headphones, a modded M-Audio 24/96 DAC, and Yulong A18. I'm not sure if I'll bother with pics since others have posted far better ones of this stuff than I could ever hope to capture. Anyway, I have two weeks to familiarize myself with the new toys and then the get-together will be on Saturday, February 28th. You can follow along over at AVS and I intend to post anything of interest from that thread to this one, but I'm also a lazy POS at times so don't count on it.
 
Looking forward to your impressions!

Hopefully you Hanover enough cables, I didn't think to send any. Lol

FWIW I use the optical connection from my source to the Bifrost, I have never used the RCA digital input.

The LD and the A2 get hot, real hot, so don't put anything on top of them. ;)
 
The DAC I sent has both unbalanced (RCA) and balanced (XLR) outputs; I've tried the balanced with the Yulong A18 - not so great. I'm not sure if it's just a signal level issue, or if the mods to the DAC focused primarily on the RCA outputs, dunno... You may want to experiment with both, if you have the cables. (OTOH the balanced connection between my Yulong DAC and the A18 is noticeably better than the unbalanced, IMHO.)
 
PaulyT, you get the Crack today?

Can I try that DAC when Cmonster is done? I can send you the Bifrost!
 
I got Crack in the mail today! (hopefully the police aren't reading this :laughing: )

Sure, we can exchange DACs...
 
Let me know if you have any interest in playing around with a B&W P7.
 
^Thanks for the offer, I appreciate it. A good friend/co-worker of mine has a pair as well and I've thought about asking to borrow them for that weekend.
 
All this talk of headphone gear kicking around tickled a few neural engrams. I immediately wondered whatever happened to some of my older sets of phones.

After a half hour of searching I found my AKG K240s. They date from the late '70s - I think. I can't find any series letter for them - and even though I've kept and filed receipts and owner's manuals for everything I've bought and still own since forever, I can't find anything for these guys. Anyhow, I've been listening to them and while they sound pretty good from the upper bass on up, they completely fail the Sk8er Boi test: they're missing at least the lower bass octave.

The other pair that I have date from the early to mid '70s: a set of Pioneer SE505. Could not find them. But I did find a note in my Pioneer gear file that says that about ten years ago I loaned them to a work colleague. I'll see if I can track them down next week. I imagine they'll sound muffled compared to the K240s, and likely have even less bass output, but I'm still curious to give them a listen again if I can ever get them back. They were kinda neat in that they had volume and treble adjustment knobs. I listened to many vinyl records with them through my old Sears receiver and turntable, along with a bunch of 8-tracks.

To recalibrate my headphone listening, I just plugged my Denon AH-D5000s in and am happy to report that all is well in the world.

Jeff
 
Hey Pauly, the next time you're getting ready to box something up and ship it out, anything, give me a head's up so I can purchase some stock in 3M first...
 
Okay, I decided to take one crappy pic of everything:

35FCC9D4-D298-4268-8A5E-BA6557C7FF69_zpsc1dkhiph.jpg
 
CMonster said:
Hey Pauly, the next time you're getting ready to box something up and ship it out, anything, give me a head's up so I can purchase some stock in 3M first...
Click to expand...

:laughing-rolling: Hey, it's $1100 worth of gear... not taking any chances!
 
Just got a listening area figured out and doing a little testing. Currently listening to Area 52 by Rodrigo Y Gabriela via optical from the computer > Schiit Bifrost > Schiit A2 > Denon D5000. I've already had one of those awesome moments where the hair on the back of your neck stands up from the audio bliss. This is gonna be fun!
 
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you our next tube roller: Mr. CMonster. :music-listening:
 
Yep, he is gonna get hooked. Lol
.
Wish you lived close enough for me to let you get a listen to the WA2 with the T1's or the HD650's.
 
The GTG was last night and there are some posts in the AVS thread. We spent the first two hours bullshitting, checking out the basement and HT, and eating so it was after 8:30 before we touched any headphones. We had two stations both pulling from the same iTunes (mostly lossless) library with optical out from the two computers.

Dinner is ready so I'll finish this post later...
 
Did the stairs hold up to all that fresh traffic? :happy-smileygiantred:
 
Batman said:
Did the stairs hold up to all that fresh traffic? :happy-smileygiantred:
Click to expand...

Yes, yes they did and I gave you kudos. One of the guys who attended posted in your HT of the Month thread (jedimastergrant) and he wanted to know when your next GTG was going to be. :)

His theater is pretty nice, that's where I first heard an Orbit Shifter, and it's pretty funny that his kids have no idea that the theater exists - there's just a mystery door in their playroom that leads to nowhere.
 
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