Better Get Together: RAS Feb 28th

[daboyz]

Sorry to you Georgia peaches but the RAS Rules!! We're having a get together the same day. We're going to play "Mythbusters" and blow the whole "Emo Rules" crap outta the water.:p:D

[heiney9]

Some of the gear possibly in attendance:

Monarchy SM 70 mono's
Adcom GFA555
Emotiva XPA-5
Marsh A200s
Pass Aleph 30
Rouge Audio 66 pre-amp
Monarchy NM24 toob DAC
Aragon D2A2
Rotel RCD 1072
Nakamichi Ca-5
MIT's
RTi's
LSi's
SACD
DIY-speaker cables

[SCompRacer]

I'll try and get days for the week so I can attend. A day off during crunch week is doubtful. You got lots of stuff there. If I can make it, want me to bring anything? A camera with flash for sure...I like the expressions Doug makes when the flash goes off while he is swapping gear out...:p:D

[daboyz]

I'll try and get days for the week so I can attend. A day off during crunch week is doubtful. You got lots of stuff there. If I can make it, want me to bring anything? A camera with flash for sure...I like the expressions Doug makes when the flash goes off while he is swapping gear out...:p:D

Yes,the the ass cheek "clench" expression is one of the better ones.;):D

[nikolas812]

Sure would like to attend one of these one day....


Mapquest puts it at 6 hours one way from house..





Nick

[comfortablycurt]

Some of the gear possibly in attendance:

Monarchy SM 70 mono's
Adcom GFA555
Emotiva XPA-5
Marsh A200s
Pass Aleph 30
Rouge Audio 66 pre-amp
Monarchy NM24 toob DAC
Aragon D2A2
Rotel RCD 1072
Nakamichi Ca-5
MIT's
RTi's
LSi's
SACD
DIY-speaker cables

I can't believe I'm going to miss this.:o

There are several things there I've been wanting to check out...Namely the Rotel 1072, the Adcom, the Emo...and of course the Aleph.;)

Have a great time guys.

[SCompRacer]

Another RAS meet has come......and is still going! The younger guys went out for hookers and blow. I went home. Ok, they went clubbing, and I have the prez and some members of the Chicago Audio Society due at the house tomorrow. Here is a group pic of the RAS, less me. What a fun day!

Thanks to Aaron and Michele for allowing us into their home!

Curt, don't believe what Duell tells you about the initiation....he might tell you he was stripped, thrown out the front door, and we called the police. Not true! A neighbor called the cops.

More to come!

[schwarcw]

Are the two guys sitting on the black love seat out of jail already?

[heiney9]

JHC, Rich is that the best picture you took of the group :D

[comfortablycurt]

Another RAS meet has come......and is still going! The younger guys went out for hookers and blow. I went home. Ok, they went clubbing, and I have the prez and some members of the Chicago Audio Society due at the house tomorrow. Here is a group pic of the RAS, less me. What a fun day!

Thanks to Aaron and Michele for allowing us into their home!

Curt, don't believe what Duell tells you about the initiation....he might tell you he was stripped, thrown out the front door, and we called the police. Not true! A neighbor called the cops.

More to come!

You mean to tell me that I missed out on hookers and blow too!? Damn!!! If I would have known there was gonna be hookers and blow, I would have definitely made it up there.

I guess I'll come prepared for a beat down when I come to my first RAS meeting. So is Duell going to recover? Is he questioning his own sexuality after the "strip down"? lmao:p Duell's probably going to be going all "Buffalo Bill" on us now. Duffalo Duell?

Wish I could have been there. I've had an exceedingly boring day myself. It's consisted of doing essentially nothing, so needless to say, I had much more fun than you guys did.

[leroyjr1]

Another RAS meet has come......and is still going! The younger guys went out for hookers and blow. I went home. Ok, they went clubbing, and I have the prez and some members of the Chicago Audio Society due at the house tomorrow. Here is a group pic of the RAS, less me. What a fun day!

Thanks to Aaron and Michele for allowing us into their home!

Curt, don't believe what Duell tells you about the initiation....he might tell you he was stripped, thrown out the front door, and we called the police. Not true! A neighbor called the cops.

More to come!

Can we get some names with those faces?

[danger boy]

who cares about the guys.. we just wanna see the gear ;)


looks like you guys had a good time. but no one looks hammered.. i'm disappointed in you all. :p

[comfortablycurt]

Can we get some names with those faces?

x2

I know Dave, and that's it. Second from the left behind the couch is Dave(daboyz). We need some names to put to the faces here.:)

x3 on the gear. We need more pics Rich! I have to see what I missed out on!

[heiney9]

who cares about the guys.. we just wanna see the gear ;)


looks like you guys had a good time. but no one looks hammered.. i'm disappointed in you all. :p

Rich took all the pics and he will be busy today so not sure he'll get them posted today.

It was great fun.....it was nice to meet Duell (lessisnevermore) and my brother's friend Rob is well on way to being totally corrupted. Most of us went to see a local favorite guitarist. Pistol Pete so we saved some of the drinking for that :D.

We needed more time as we really just got short samples of some of the gear. There were pieces that never made it out of the boxes. These get togethers are so much fun. Although, we need some roadies like a band has to carry all our crap. It's a lot of work hauling all that gear in and out, etc :)

[heiney9]

Another RAS meet has come......and is still going! The younger guys went out for hookers and blow. I went home. Ok, they went clubbing, and I have the prez and some members of the Chicago Audio Society due at the house tomorrow. Here is a group pic of the RAS, less me. What a fun day!

Thanks to Aaron and Michele for allowing us into their home!

Curt, don't believe what Duell tells you about the initiation....he might tell you he was stripped, thrown out the front door, and we called the police. Not true! A neighbor called the cops.

More to come!

Back row; Blake (my brother), Dave (Daboyz), our friend Rob, Duell (Lessisnevermore) in the Chicago Bears hat, Aaron (a_mattison) the host.

On the couch; Doug (dkg999) and myself (what a horrible picture) :)

[SCompRacer]

and he will be busy today

Not so busy that I would prioritize over my homies.;)

RAS 02/28/2009

http://s417.photobucket.com/albums/p...ty%2002282009/

Slide show.

http://s417.photobucket.com/albums/p...view=slideshow

Later!

[Face]

Enough pictures, how about some gear reviews/impressions?

[Lowell_M]

Oh good. I was worried there would be some a-crack pictures in there with all of the bending over to change gear.

This was another great get together. The hit for me was the Aleph 30. As suggested by H9 before the get together I was a little worried that the 30wpc of the Aleph wasn't going to be able to fill my big'ish room, but that concern quickly vanished. The amp has a very nice tube-like warmness but with plenty of detail.

Where this amp shines is in the layers of the imaging both from front to back and left to right. The separation of instruments is amazing and lifelike. 99% of what this amp does is just short of amazing. The 1% that is left over is a very slight dissappointment of the bass attack and extension. The rest of the great points of this amp far make up for this minor shortcoming. I would guess that another 30wpc would do the trick.

The Aleph is living proof that a simple wattage rating doesn't tell you anything about the performance of an amp. There was a lot of conversation about 2nd, and 3rd harmonic distortion etc. that I didn't really pay attention to because I was trying to get my damn remote to work, but there's a lot more that goes into the performance of the amp than watts. The general design philosophy of the designer is more important and Nelson Pass knows what the hell he's doing!

[Lowell_M]

I was just looking at the gear list and man did we miss getting to a lot of that gear. I soooo wanted to hear the MIT cables in my rig and forgot about them. What is missing from the gear list is the ADCOM preamp, which, if I were to replace the Nakamichi, I think that GFP-750 would be my next step in preamps. I can't completely get into the tube-Pre sound, although Doug's Rouge Audio pre sounded great.

[heiney9]

Thanks for having us Aaron...............and we missed a lot of gear and music yesterday :(. We'll have to do this again when you get back from China and perhaps make it a little more organized :).

I hope everyone enjoyed Pistol Pete last night..............he was really on last night, well he's always great to watch and listen to, but last night he really really played well.

I'm heading to Chicago and I'll write more tonight when I get back.

H9

[comfortablycurt]

So I take it that the Adcom 750 made it into rotation for a while then? Any thoughts on it? Did you guys try it with the Adcom 545?

The 750's a bit out of my price range right now, but I've heard great things about it being really neutral sounding. I've been wanting to check one out. I may end up picking one up sometime farther down the line. I'll probably end up with a GFP-565 or GFP-710 though to start though.

Great pics Rich.:) Especially the pizza at the end. I can't believe I missed out on that!...lol Looks like it was a great time.

[Lowell_M]

So I take it that the Adcom 750 made it into rotation for a while then? Any thoughts on it? Did you guys try it with the Adcom 545?

The 750's a bit out of my price range right now, but I've heard great things about it being really neutral sounding. I've been wanting to check one out. I may end up picking one up sometime farther down the line. I'll probably end up with a GFP-565 or GFP-710 though to start though.

Great pics Rich.:) Especially the pizza at the end. I can't believe I missed out on that!...lol Looks like it was a great time.

The 750 was in the mix for a little while but I can't remember the amp combinations we had on it. It seemed to have the sound that I like from the Nak but not as forward and with a little more depth.

[blakeh]

I had a great time on Sunday! I'd already met Doug, Rob, Aaron & Michell, but it was nice to put some faces with names for Rich, Dave and Duell (apologies if I'm not spelling your name correctly!).

We had A LOT of gear to get through and only really heard about half of it. It turned out to be an amp shootout for the most part.

We started out with Aaron's GFA-555. I'll start out by saying that I share H9's love of ADCOM gear, so I may have been a bit biased, but I thought it drove the LSi15s extremely well. As you can see from my sig, I use a 585 in my computer rig and it would be very difficult to ever part with for the basic fact that it provides a lot of current to whatever it's driving. I think it mated well with Aaron's Nak CA-5 (which is a steal on the used market if you can find one). I walked in on Aaron playing "Jazz At The Pawnshop" and I have to say -- I thought his whole rig sounded really good.

The second amp we plugged in was the Emotiva that Duell brought. The first thing I noticed was how friggin' big it was! I'm surprised Duell was able to carry it by himself. In this age of 10 pound Best Buy receivers, this thing was built like a tank. Part of that may be due to the fact that is was a 5-channel amp rather than the stereo version. I was told about the infamous Emotiva thread here on the forum, but I never had a chance to either read it or participate in it. I was probably the least biased person in the room when we fired up the Emotiva because I knew absolutely nothing about it. I'd heard of the brand before (in relation to home theater applications) but had neither heard one of their units nor knew anything about their reputation.

Keeping in mind that everyone likes a different sound, I can only say that it wasn't my cup of tea. It certainly sounded better than a lot of the HT receivers I've heard out there, and you could tell by the build quality that it wasn't cheaply made, but in the end the sound just didn't grab me. The soundstage was a little limited and the separation of instruments wasn't quite there. The best word I can come up with to describe it is "grainy." It sounds like it would be sound great in a HT setup and I would consider one to drive my HT speakers, but I wouldn't put it in my 2-channel system.

The next amp we hooked up was H9's Pass Labs Aleph 30. As others have said in this thread, it truly was the hit of the meet. I sometimes think that if Nelson Pass was 30 years younger and had a vagina I would be attending my brother's wedding to him! :D The amp sounded great (though I've heard it plenty of times before this meet so it wasn't surprising). I think the separation is what makes this amp so good. Strings being plucked sounded like separate entities rather than mushed together. And for anyone who doesn't believe a 30 watt amp can drive LSI15s without trouble needs to hear the evidence to the contrary. It won't fill a huge room, but it got plenty loud in Aaron's listening space. H9 just needs to save up for some XA100.5s!

Next up were my Monarchy SM-70 Pro monoblocks (80 Watts each). We had some trouble getting them to work in Aaron's system due to some humming in the speakers when they were hooked up via RCAs. So, we had to drag out my ADCOM GFP-750 and use balanced cables which eliminated the hum. Unfortunately that meant that it was hard to compare them to the other amps which had all been hooked up to the Nak preamp. Obviously we all like our own gear so I won't get into a review of my own equipment (I'll let the others do it if they'd like). Suffice to say I've always liked the musical sound of these amps and I wasn't disappointed. That was the only time the GFP-750 was used. We went back to the Nak pre for the next amp...

...which was Dave's Marsh. I'd already heard this amp over at H9's place a few times as we compared it to the ADCOM 545 and the Pass Labs amp. Dave had mentioned that it should've been about equal with Aaron's ADCOM 555 and I think that's a fair statement. I'm so used to ADCOM's sound (I've owned their amps in one form or another for the past 15 years) that it's hard for me to be objective. They were close enough that I'd say you'd have to chalk up any differences to personal preference.

After the Marsh amp we started to spread out and get a little more social. I know that Doug hooked up some equipment including a Rogue Audio pre that I sounded very good. He had some trouble with remote volume control on one of the units he hooked up, but I can't recall which one it was at the moment.

After heading downstairs and watching a few DVDs, it was already 8:30pm and we hadn't even gotten to half the equipment!

I want to thank Aaron again for inviting a bunch of guys into his home. He was most gracious. I enjoyed everyone's company and it was nice to be in a group where everyone was supportive rather than argumentative (as can sometime happen too easily online).

I look forward to the next meetup!