1st Annual Basspig Audiophile Society Meetup (Connecticut)
- Thread starter Mark (Basspig) Weiss
- Start date
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- Tags
- audiophile meet club
I had a great time, Mark. Thanks for your hospitality. I have just a couple notes to add.
I was the last man standing and didn't get home until the sun came up. (really only because I had a long drive). Mark cranked up the volume for me to Basspig levels. I must say at those levels everything loose on your body reacts to the transient shock waves. This surprisingly includes your scalp, which seemingly dances back on forth on your skull because the hair becomes an "acoustic sail".
The amount of overhead in this system is incredible and yet another reminder that I need to upgrade my own system. It however wasn't all about SPL. I also to heard a demo of Carver's sonic holography, a feature of the Carver C-4000. Using only 2 channels it really does put images WAY out to the left and right. I had to verify the material really was 2 channel and that his side surrounds were indeed off. It was very convincing, but limited to about a 2 1/2 ft wide sweet spot. If one moves to the left or right too far, the illusion disappears. We also played around with a subharmonic synthesize, which can restore some of the fundamentals in poorly recorded music. I have one in my rack as well, but I have not really used it. I wish i could have had more time to demo some things I brought with me, but Mark kept pulling out some great material and I was more than happy to absorb the experience. I think this first meeting was a success and will give him a baseline for future meets.
ScoTT
AKA Vinculum
I was the last man standing and didn't get home until the sun came up. (really only because I had a long drive). Mark cranked up the volume for me to Basspig levels. I must say at those levels everything loose on your body reacts to the transient shock waves. This surprisingly includes your scalp, which seemingly dances back on forth on your skull because the hair becomes an "acoustic sail".
The amount of overhead in this system is incredible and yet another reminder that I need to upgrade my own system. It however wasn't all about SPL. I also to heard a demo of Carver's sonic holography, a feature of the Carver C-4000. Using only 2 channels it really does put images WAY out to the left and right. I had to verify the material really was 2 channel and that his side surrounds were indeed off. It was very convincing, but limited to about a 2 1/2 ft wide sweet spot. If one moves to the left or right too far, the illusion disappears. We also played around with a subharmonic synthesize, which can restore some of the fundamentals in poorly recorded music. I have one in my rack as well, but I have not really used it. I wish i could have had more time to demo some things I brought with me, but Mark kept pulling out some great material and I was more than happy to absorb the experience. I think this first meeting was a success and will give him a baseline for future meets. ScoTT
AKA Vinculum
Great feedback Scott, thanx! :b ...That 'scalp' thing ... as in "acoustic sail".
And welcome too! :b
Bob
And welcome too! :b
Bob
Took me a while to get back up to speed.. got up late, if you know what I mean..
I could not find my small tripod in a hurry. One guest from PA was ready to go home (long drive ahead) and I remembered at the last second "group photo" and did not want to hold everything up while I go thrashing through the house looking for my tripod (which was upstairs by the bird cages) and just took the photo in a matter of seconds and then we were onto the next thing. Oh well, it's no loss. My appearance would degrade the quality of the group shot.
I had a household full of inlaws and family, plus it was getting late in the evening, so I held things down to reasonable levels to keep the peace (wife does not approve of these 'meetups' and doesn't see the sense in any of it). But we did get to enjoy stuff, and Scott, I think realizes the benefit of high volume listening with high dynamic range music, that it can be enjoyable and not so fatiguing as one might think.
The fireworks demo added new meaning to the term "hold onto your hat", as one of our guests was wearing a baseball cap and informed me later on that it was being lifted off of his head by some of the louder explosions.
We had decent quality eats (my lasagna recipe and $40 worth of cheeses that went into it), wine and also rum cake that Scott brought, beer, etc. to make everyone feel comfortable.
Later in the evening, I demo'd my MIDI stuff, and we listened to a smattering of Japanese, Korean and American (remastered oldies) at elevated volume levels, including the Isley Brothers' version of "Summer Breeze", which Scott and I agreed was better than the original version.
I had a good time in the lab, demonstrating some unique properties of capacitors and vacuum tubes and fielding questions from the group. I had forgotten how much I enjoy doing these presentations to an interested audience. What a fun day it was for me! Thanks to everyone who attended for making it an overwhelming success!
I could not find my small tripod in a hurry. One guest from PA was ready to go home (long drive ahead) and I remembered at the last second "group photo" and did not want to hold everything up while I go thrashing through the house looking for my tripod (which was upstairs by the bird cages) and just took the photo in a matter of seconds and then we were onto the next thing. Oh well, it's no loss. My appearance would degrade the quality of the group shot.
I had a household full of inlaws and family, plus it was getting late in the evening, so I held things down to reasonable levels to keep the peace (wife does not approve of these 'meetups' and doesn't see the sense in any of it). But we did get to enjoy stuff, and Scott, I think realizes the benefit of high volume listening with high dynamic range music, that it can be enjoyable and not so fatiguing as one might think.
The fireworks demo added new meaning to the term "hold onto your hat", as one of our guests was wearing a baseball cap and informed me later on that it was being lifted off of his head by some of the louder explosions.
We had decent quality eats (my lasagna recipe and $40 worth of cheeses that went into it), wine and also rum cake that Scott brought, beer, etc. to make everyone feel comfortable.
Later in the evening, I demo'd my MIDI stuff, and we listened to a smattering of Japanese, Korean and American (remastered oldies) at elevated volume levels, including the Isley Brothers' version of "Summer Breeze", which Scott and I agreed was better than the original version.
I had a good time in the lab, demonstrating some unique properties of capacitors and vacuum tubes and fielding questions from the group. I had forgotten how much I enjoy doing these presentations to an interested audience. What a fun day it was for me! Thanks to everyone who attended for making it an overwhelming success!
Au contraire! FWIW, I was just kidding you about the tripod.I could not find my small tripod in a hurry. One guest from PA was ready to go home (long drive ahead) and I remembered at the last second "group photo" and did not want to hold everything up while I go thrashing through the house looking for my tripod (which was upstairs by the bird cages) and just took the photo in a matter of seconds and then we were onto the next thing. Oh well, it's no loss. My appearance would degrade the quality of the group shot.
Great feedback Scott, thanx! :b ...That 'scalp' thing ... as in "acoustic sail".
And welcome too! :b
Bob
Thanks Bob. I'm just trying to describe my experience!
As you can see I've been a member for over a year and finally made my first post! I'll try to be more active. Unfortunatly there is no support app for the iPhone, which I use often to read forums when I'm away from home.
Were you really?
Of course. I originally made the point to Mark at the time he whipped out his camera and we were surrounded by tripods (with video cameras on them).But it certainly was the truth!
Those were video tripods, equipped with a different mount than would fit on the SLR camera. I have a photo tripod upstairs, but I didn't want to lose the moment by dashing off to get it, or by unscrewing parts and reassembling to make one of the other tripods take a photographic mount. It's kind of like "we were surrounded by walnuts, but we didn't have any nut cracker".
Well said.It's kind of like "we were surrounded by walnuts, but we didn't have any nut cracker".
Fantastic Mark! :b ...I recognized one individual right away; Kal! :b
Looks good: audio "nuts" have a certain look about them, the same around the world it seems! In a good sense, that is ... :b
The big shame is that only one apparently experienced the full throttle treatment: I have a coupla disks that I would have been curious as to how they came across thusly ...
Frank
:bThe big shame is that only one apparently experienced the full throttle treatment: I have a coupla disks that I would have been curious as to how they came across thusly ...
Frank
I think we hit 135dB that evening, but it was after 9pm and my wife, daughter, inlaws and parrots were in the house upstairs, so I had to keep the levels somewhat sane. The next limiting factor is my 15A potter & brumfield breaker that is in my amp racks, which I refuse to defeat because magnetic breakers proved their safety value when I had a MOSFET switcher fail in Jan 2007. Without that breaker, there would have been a fire. Instead, it just tripped off uneventfully.
I think everyone else chickened out on the louder stuff. The fireworks were the 'warmup' to the main event.
I think everyone else chickened out on the louder stuff. The fireworks were the 'warmup' to the main event.
