Nice pictures, Carl. The visit from Canadian Prime Minister was a nice surprise, eh? haha And he brought some very nice cables too!
I had a blast, it was "fun" meet this time, not as technical or intense, although we did tread into some good critical listening, discussion and comparisons.
Not cooking was a big hit with this host. Thanks for buying the pizza guys. Thanks to Ken's wife Vera for the ooey gooey rich and chewie caramel brownies. Much appreciated by all, as last time. Thanks to Carl for bringing the fine booze. The remainder is safely stowed for our next meet, wherever that might be. Thanks for the Dunkin Donuts, Mr Prime Minister. They were well appreciated, every last one of them.
I was fortunate to be able to listen to EL156, and shoot the shit with Bill almost all day prior to the meet. They sounded great to my ears, Bill and the amps... haha. The amps are smoother and warmer sounding than my Snappers, and that is Bill's preference. The Morningstar Audio house sound is firmly in place with this amp, and the match with my Minimax preamp was excellent. Bill is not just the importer on this one, he say in the planning, design and parts quality decisions, and it shows. It is a much more significant statement than the Minimax, although the simplicity and elegance remains in both appearance and sound. The innards are very well laid out and construction is a work of art. I liked the sound of them on the Usher Be-718's better than the RMAF speakers or my Legacy's. The Usher's extreme detail retrieval pulled the amps a bit more toward my taste and revealed the beautiful tone of these amps. Snappers on the Ushers were a tad distracting with the intense detail, but I think my brain would adapt in time...
I loved the Ushers. I had auditioned them the previous week for a couple days and found them to be a lot of fun to listen to. Detail is something that I love as long as tone is good. I strained mightily to find fault with the little ushers - to defend my pride of Legacy ownership, and really only came away with deficiencies in relation to the positives of my big speakers, namely scale and low frequency impact and accuracy. You can only do so much with a 6" driver. But the little Usher makes the best use of small woofer to make big believable bass. The ACI Sapphire also made a good impression on me in the big clean bass dept, but I can't remember it well enough to make a direct comparison. The SP Timepiece also had great bass, but is a much larger speaker. All three are awesome but very different. We are so spoiled and fortunate to be able to hear such great toys.
Sol Sammet, a local electronics designer brought the latest iterations of his integrated amps. The I7, I30, and I60. The I30 (30wpc) made an excellent impression on everybody. Critiques were accepted graciously and he said he knows exactly what to do to address the issues that were raised. He left excited about the suggested improvements, and about bringing the tweaked amps again to the next meet. I myself could not hear the deficiencies until someone else pointed them out, the I30 especially is very close to nailing it. Sol also generously helped Bill with the diagnosis of the tube amp problem - he was able to determine that the issue was minor and easily corrected, thereby alleviating any further worry.
I was glad to get some honest and even some good comments about the Feastrex speakers. That is very encouraging, because I know what these guys ears are used to, and not giving me any slack because of the single driver, especially not at the price, which is same as the new Ushers. Hmm, now that's scary! We had fun with them. Short on power cords, I first played them with the Cary SLI-80, which I had never done before. ohmygod it sounded terrible. The Snappers improved it dramatically.
We heard Bigfish8's Bolder modified Squeezebox, Bolder modified Elpac power supply, and stock Burson buffer in various combinations with my stock SB, stock Power-One linear power supply, and Altmann battery powered DAC and Minimax preamp, all into Snappers and Legacys. We used a mediocre recording of Tchaikovsky 1812 that became less and less mediocre as we zeroed in on our favorite combination. Thanks for Shane for the JPS SC3 wires that made all sources sound amazing. It was painful to watch the SC3s ICs leave my house... again. My wife was proud, I only bought 3 tube dampers!
mdconnelly was finally able to come to the meet for the first time, after several previous tries, and I enjoyed meeting you Mike. He brought a whole storeful of accessories from Herbie's Audio Labs. We used a bunch of the stuff during the night. It was too chaotic to focus on changes unfortunately. Too much stuff. We will address the next time, and try to do a scientific listening to the Herbie's stuff. The EL156's and the Minimax preamp were fully damped. The Snappers did not use any dampers.
I need to install more and better power outlets - next time.
Rich