I guess I can retire now lol
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You should edit it so the article is on SA and just put a link to it on headfi 
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Notice there was a couple people from North Carolina in this forum. There is a Schiit Meet at Sparta, NC. It will be on April 23rd 3-7 PM ET. The description says there is no cost to attend, so we can walk in free! Lets try to get a lot of people there so we can have more audio meets in North Carolina 
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That’s really cool! Not sure I’ll be able to make it, but I’m probably only an hour and a half from Sparta. I have exactly zero Schiits to give (I mean bring), but have always been a bit curious.
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Cool, hope you can make it! Me, I’m having car troubles, but hopefully get it resolve before April 23rd. If everything goes smoothly, I want to bring the Cayin N7 (source) > Allnic HPA-5000XL (Tube Amp) > ATH-L3000, D8000 Pro LE, and Onkyo A800. I talked to the organizer and Schiit will only be providing IPads for their rigs, so don’t forget to bring a music library source if you are going.
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So historically, the first time for me, I got a chance to do a quick demo of some headphones today. It took place in a small meeting room packed with gear and excited dudes (30-50) so you can imagine the air was thick 
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Some basic info relevant for all of those I was able to grab for short session:
- source gear: there were only 3 somewhat solid chains in the room, Ferrum stack, Chord Hugo TT and I believe Burson Audio Conductor 3X Grand Tourer. I was not able to grab a sit and use any of those, so my setup was my LPGT with flac tracks.
-funny enough there were only headphones I haven’t tried before in the room form Abyss, Audeze, AT, Sennheiser etc so plenty to choose from, but due to time limitations and ability to grab something like 1266 of other folks head I picked some intentionally and some like ADX5000 and HD800s.
List:
- IEMs: 64 Audio Tia Trio, Campfire Audio Andromeda Emerald Sea, Campfire Audio Solaris Stellar Horizon
- Headphones: Abyss Diana TC,Audeze CRBN, Dan Clark EXPANSE, Meze Empyrean Jet Black, Audio-Technica ATH-ADX5000, Sennheiser HD 800 S
Short impressions in the order I tried them:
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64 Audio Tia Trio: very solid IEM, great detail nice bass and overall presentation. I can see why this is very highly regarded. There was however something maybe in mid/upper mid sections that jumped on me in 1-2 tracks that felt a bit off but at the end best IEM of 3 I tried.
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Campfire Audio Andromeda Emerald Sea: just big NO for me. I was curious about it but after Trio this was all but not my glass of wine. Sounded muffled and somewhat muddy and low res.
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Campfire Audio Solaris Stellar Horizon: this my last try (there were only 6-7 IEMs to try) and it was actually very decent. Much better than Andros but I felt like it was lacking in detail and maybe speed compared to Trio. But enjoyable as whole package.
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Audio-Technica ATH-ADX5000: easily the best thing I tried. Everything seemed to be the way I like. Surely no bass cannons but never felt like I wanted more bass or something else. It might be stupid to say but it gave me a MySphare vibe. Not immediate plan but I can see myself adding this one to my collection.
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Dan Clark EXPANSE: firstly, LPGT could not drive it properly as I was able to run it off 3.5 mm jack and it was somewhat listenable on 100 volume. But with that said I actually liked it and was wondering how this sounds on proper chain so I would surely give it a second chance.
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Audeze CRBN: I wanted to try some stats and this was free. It was super strangely set up and I fed energizer of my 3.5 mm DAP jack, so I guess chain was a bottleneck here. Overall I was not very impressed. Not terrible but meh. I felt like susvara was faster and more detailed by far. There were also some Stax but could not get to those.
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Meze Empyrean Jet Black: comfy and fantastically built, nice bass. That is all positive I can tell. Not really compete with any other high end cans I tried in other aspects. There was also Elite version I was not able to pick so maybe next time.
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Sennheiser HD 800 S: I guess this could be my second favorite after ADX5000. Huge stage which is not very important for me but overall good sounding headphones. Nice mids and timbre but falling behind ADX a bit in most aspects for me.
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Abyss Diana TC: weird would be my summarized feeling. Interesting build but not super comfy and sounded just weird. Again, same as for Expanse underpowered by DAP but I guess some sense of general sound could be picked up. I just did not like it and felt like I don’t want to wait for 1266 to try.
So chaotic for the first time but I definitely gained some perspective and valuable thoughts there.
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Went to Axpona today. It was my first 2 channel show. I’m not really into speakers, other than desktop, but a friend from out of town was going and I thought it would be fun to hang out with him.
I will say that most rooms were not set up well for speakers, and the poor resulting sound, plus terrible music choices, meant that I did a lot of speed dating, popping into rooms, taking a listen for a few minutes and then leaving again. PS Audio’s room was the biggest disappointment because I was looking forward to it, but it was packed with people and the music was too loud. It was a very popular room because I think everyone wanted to hear their new speakers, but I honestly don’t understand what everyone got out of the experience.
There were a few rooms that I did enjoy (in no particular order):
- LTA Ultralinear + integrated amp driving PureAudioProject Duet15 Open Baffle Speakers. Maybe this was my favorite because I enjoyed the music they were playing and forgot about the equipment.
- LTA Z40+ (EL34 tubes) driving Fern & Roby Audio Raven III Speakers. They were using a Fern & Roby turntable as source, which was fantastic, so maybe this was my joint favorite too.
- Pass INT-60 driving GoldenEar speakers.
- Lumin stack driving DeVORE speakers.
I didn’t do much headphone listening but I compared the LTA MZ3 to the Z10E and preferred the MZ3, maybe because I own one and am used to the sound.
Also had a couple of non-audio fun experiences. I was talking to Zach (ZMF) and Herb Reichert walked up and started to chat. I was going to ask him to settle the argument about how much he likes the Mojo Mystique but he looked at his watch and suddenly left, to go meet with Steve Gutenberg.
Late this afternoon, I met Jonny, the owner of Snake River cables, who had offered to bring my AES cable to Axpona, since I had told him I would be here. He asked if I wanted to join him for dinner, and I almost said no, because I didn’t know him, but it turned out to be the highlight of the day. He brought a friend, who was a retired music journalist, and I brought a friend, who happened to go to college in Idaho (where Snake River is based) and the whole evening was spent swapping stories.
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Thanks for sharing, and to think you weren’t even going to go! The LTA room seems to have had their new DAC in the chain as well. It’s fun seeing the equipment and seeing people but you’re right the sound experience can be very underwhelming.
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Interesting what did you hear different?
It was hard to do an accurate comparison because the MZ3 used a DAP as it’s DAC and the Z10E used the new LTA DAC, but my Caldera and Stellia sounded more or less the way I expected from the MZ3 and there was less flavor from the Z10E, which was more neutral and less rich, but probably more detailed (can’t remember). This was consistent with my experience at CanJam last year, and was the reason I bought the MZ3 at that time.
One wasn’t better than the other, I just preferred the frequency response of the MZ3. And it’s not like they’re radically different.
This morning, LTA let me come in early, an hour before the show started, and demo the Ultralinear and Z40, which were in 2 different rooms, with 2 different DACs again (UL had the LTA DAC and Z40 had Weiss 501), so I had to do a lot of mental triangulation to compare them.
I was fully expecting to like the rich mids of the Z40’s EL84 tubes more but there was something about the Ultralinear that I fell in love with. I know, my decision making is flawed, because if I preferred the more flavored amp yesterday, why did I prefer the more neutral amp today? Who knows, I had to trust in my subconscious mind. I wasn’t able to compare the Z10E and Ultralinear, so I’m not entirely sure what the differences are - all I know is that there was something about the UL that made me want to get my credit card out.
Oh yeah, I bought an amp today LOL.
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It’s still a prototype but it had obvious synergy with their amps. I got to try it with the Z10E and UL.
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Here are some observations of various listening rooms I went to today.
Both Danacables and Kimber had similar A-B tests for their headphone and speaker cables respectively, both of which were very useful. Danacables had 2 Susvaras plugged into the same amp, one with the Hifiman stock cable and the other with the Lazuli Nirvana “Plush” (although it didn’t seem to be that plush to me) and I was able to seamlessly switch from one headphone to the other during the same song. Needless to say, I preferred the Lazuli, but it wasn’t a fair competition. I wonder how many cables they sell by doing this?
Kimber had something similar by stacking 2 Zu speakers (I think a brand new Zu model, but didn’t get the name) on top of each other. One was wired with their 8pr speaker cable and the other with the much more expensive Carbon cable. They used a Rupert Neve mixer to switch between the speakers. TBH, I liked the sound of both cables with the Zus, but the Carbons were smoother and richer.
I visited the top floor today, which is where many of the big money brands were, as the rooms were bigger and therefore easier to tame. My favorite setups used Goebel Divin Nobless speakers ($220K a pair) and the omnidirectional MBL Radialstrahler 101 E MkII (a bargain at $84K a pair). The giant Goebels had plenty of bass, and could rock out. I think I preferred the more natural-sounding MBLs, but they only played audiophile jazz, so it’s hard to know how they’d do with rock.
A much more affordable omnidirectional speaker, which I thoroughly enjoyed, was Phillips Design, whose $4.5K price was miniscule compared to the other speakers I’d just heard. Similar to the MBL, the Phillips Design was very natural sounding, and had a huge sweet spot. You could also customize the color of the speaker if you wanted it to blend in with your furniture (although someone did mention to me that however much you dress it up, it still looks like a waste bin.
Most gimmicky room was Bacch-SP, which is DSP software that projects 3D imaging through your speakers, using normal music sources. It also comes with a camera that tracks where your face is, and keeps the 3D image in line with your head.
They played a Pink Floyd track that starts off with a fly buzzing around, but the sweet spot was so small that only one person could hear the fly buzzing around their head (from 2 speakers), so I don’t think this was well planned, because the rep kept telling everyone else in the room that they wouldn’t be able to hear anything but regular stereo. I was sitting directly behind the sweet spot, so I got some of the special effects, but I don’t think it’s worth the $28-54K. Also, who listens to recordings of flies all day?
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Been reading about the effects of carbon between the conductor and the dialectic and I’m thinking we’re going to see more of that from vendors given what it’s supposed to do.
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Anyone there, I’m currious impressions of the amps and sound/mimic audio room. They’ve got a pretty serious stack going on over there (Sw1x dac iv spx bal → some expensive ass pres I’ve never heard of → new totl a&s mono’s)
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Thought I will do a cross post here since the other forum was asking for impressions. I wasn’t planning on posting anything since I didn’t really wrote anything down and was half drunk lol. But I can see why people are a fan of Schiit. Schiit helped send equipments for this event to happen and in one of their talks, they talked about getting the future generation more interested to get more young people into this hobby. After that meet, I think I myself is now a Schiit fan. Really good and affordable products and the community is really nice and passionate. I would like to go to more Schiit Meet to honestly just hang out even though I don’t care too much headphones anymore. It’s nice meeting other people for the first time in real life that shares the same passion. TLDR, I tried the Atrium Open, Verite Closed, and LCD 5. I liked the Verite Closed because it sounded the most “right” and “natural” to me. The soundstage was pretty impressive as well even though it’s closed back. But keep in mind I was half drunk and the listening session was with 2 songs played at least a minute in a half each. Then I spent the rest of the time plugging the Onkyo A800 into random Schiit Amps.
Cross post from Head-Fi:
Sorry, I should have wrote down my impression, I got a peanut brain. But, now I know to do that for the next meet! From memory, my favorite items in the meet was the Schiit folkvangr (sorry if I got the name confuse) and ZMF Verite Closed. I can’t tell exactly what I liked from the ZMF Verite Closed, but things sounded “right” in that headphone. The timbre on the Verite Closed was very impressive in my short listening session. Even though it’s a closed back, the soundstage was pretty big and even bigger than some open back like the Sennheiser HD600 for example. Verite resolution compared to the Caldera and D8000 Pro LE from memory is pretty lacking compare to them, but honestly I think with the right equipment, it could get near those big boys pretty easily.
For the Schiit Folkvangr, it was cleaner than I would expect from a tube amp. Didn’t experience any hiss or hum on my Onkyo A800 and that’s a sensitive headphone with 30 ohm. My experience from tube amps around the 1K-2K range was owning the Cayin HA-3A. I do remember vocals sing with the 6v6 tubes, but I think the Schiit Folkvangr resolution was better. Compare to other Schiit amps, the Folkvangr had the cleanest sound, but again it was just 1 test sound.
All my listening was short, like a 1-2 minute and my test song was Metallica “Ride the Lightning”. The other test song is Woongsan “Street Life”. Even though it was short, I don’t know how 4 hours pass so quickly lol. I guess time really do fly when you are having fun. I got to take notes to give any useful sound impressions, will try to remember to do that next meet. If we have a next meet and if I am able to attend it, I want to share everyone the sound of 45 tubes! 45 tubes is known to have the best tone for tubes and gives music a more “realistic” sound.
Took pics, but forgot to take pics on the speaker setup:
Bonus food and live music pics from Sparta, NC:
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At AXPONA, I asked a couple Booth Dudes if there was any Schiit there at all. I think there was only 1 Yggy OG at ZMF, and a Jot R at RAAL.
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Booked a trip to Canjam Chicago for both days. Anyone else planning on going?
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I haven’t decided yet, but just in case, I booked a couple of nights at the Hyatt Regency to take advantage of the CanJam rate.
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For anyone that is going to CanJam Chicago 2023, the Sennheiser HE-1 will be there! The catch is there is no pre-registration at this time, so you got to sign up at the Sennheiser booth early Saturday morning. Imma be sprinting to the Sennheiser booth 9:50 in the morning.
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