Forum birthday meet up

[Diapason]

Exactly JK. I don't want to have to wait for the write-up in The Absolute Sound.

[Claus]

Great day with lots of gear on show. Thanks to Fran and family for hosting!

[PeterK]

Thanks Fran and his family for hosting such a wonderful gathering!!

Great to meet up with other members of the forum, and congrats to all the new Irish companies prodcing such great gear.

I need an infusion of cash to support all these budding entrepeneurs.

Peter

[tony]

Will let somebody else do the long write up. CKspeakers had a pair of standmounts and floor standers using seas woofer and tweeters. 2.5 way floor standers. Heard both briefly. Very well made in black lacquer? with gold coloured tweeters. Fryderck had a pair of standmount oak veneered ceramic W/Tweeters and front firing port. Lovely looking speakers and heard a fair bit from them as they were in the audio idxxts corner down the back. Really nice impressive but don't think we will see many on these shores for reasons that are too long winded for here.

Lots of headphone amps haven't a clue of all the makes. Woo audio was one.Senns HD800's AKG K701's, Senn HD600, Stax.

Fryderck also had a very nice sounding laptop running unix operating system with minimal player. CA men were mightily impressed.

Sony CDP looked amazing in the flesh and the Icon audio amp was also a fine piece of kit.

Fran's super TT.

The usual boring stuff ciunas/Meitner/Maplins and PPang cards with strange software called MQn

Really good day with something for everybody. Sure I am forgetting some things ( Oh yes the Eist Dubh's which I am probably taken for granted now as I have heard them a good few times but they really give a lovely natural presentation}

[Fran]

I had a ball myself gents - only complaint - not enough time to hear it all.


I was impressed by the Sony SCD1 myself, and the Icon Audio amp too. Very clean sound with gobs of power. I missed 2 things that I wanted to spend time with most of all - one was frd1996 linux system and #2 was the headphone amps. There was just so much stuff that it was really like being a kid in a candy shop!

Special thanks to you all for coming and bringing it home. I think it was the most successful and well attended one yet!! Special mention to all who brought various pieces of gear with them. Not all of it got an airing - which was a pity but I suppose inevitable. Huge thanks and kudos to Cloneys for the lend of the gear too - very good of them. Someone will get a very tasty bit of kit with that SCD1 methinks. Just make sure you have a decent enough rack to hold it up!! It ain't light!

The other regret was that I didn't take loads of photos - but I know Paddy took some and if anyone else has some, please do post them up. You'll have to host them on flickr etc and then link back to here.


On a side note, my own records show that the domain name here was "born" on 16/1/2010 - which makes us just a tender 4 years old now. Its been a great year on here, with lots of new stuff happening, lots of discussions, growth and I think we have done some serious work on the computer audio side in particular. There are other great initiatives too - the classical recording of the month to mention just one. Then there is the interaction and comms between you all. Claus mentioned this yesterday in relation to an amp he dumped once - as he said himself "sure how would anyone know it was worth saving, this was before the internet". I thought that really summed up the usefulness of the forum here.

Roll on another year!!!


Fran

[giant haystacks]

many thanks to fran sue and family for having us and making us so welcome
i really enjoyed meeting and speaking to the other forum members -who could understand tyrone
and my wife lina enjoyed all the records and baby bella all the biscuits
a really nice feel good day-apart from hearing claus telling the horror story

[nico]

Thanks to Fran &his family for the hospitality.Good experience meeting other forum members ,enjoyed a lot!

Cheers!

[frd1996]

Big thanks for Fran and his crew for hospitality and patience with having such crowd. I also congratulate Fran for his horns. That was the first time I had a chance to listen to them. I am genuinely impressed with the performance.

I'd like to thank you guys for the appreciation for the ceramic speakers. Just for the clarity, they aren't mine - they belong to Janusz. To be honest, we did not expect them to perform as well. I suppose this was thanks to the room, the amplification and of course the source (PC/DAC).

And finally, it was great pleasure to meet you guys!

F

[Gerry D]

Echo. Thanks Fran and Family.
Really enjoyed it. Great to meet everybody too.
Really nice bunch.

Also it was lovely to hear some wonderful feedback on our Dubhs.

Fred and buddy (I'm sorry that I didn't catch the name) those speakers you brought were impressive. I'd like to hear them with some more powerful amps.

The headphone room was cool. I do like those HD 800's.
Didn't explore all the head amps but the Canor and Woo were nice indeed.

Fair play to Francis for bringing his family. Nice.

[tony]

If more time had allowed I would have liked to have compared the sony cdp to the meitner or ciunas dac. The Sony seems to be from the
same factory as the wadi in terms of size and weight. Would but curious how it compares sonically