Meet a couple Polkies yesterday

I spent a great afternoon with a couple of real nice forum members yesterday. a-mattison(Aaron) and dkg999(Doug). We all live in the same area and Doug and I have talked about getting together before but it just never happened. Aaron is looking to complete his HT rig and he was wondering if seperate amps would make a difference. Doug was nice enough to bring over a Parasound HCA1000 and a pair Outlaw Mono blocks as well as an assortment of cables and demo music.

I was kindly invited to come on over as well and I brought a couple of Adcom pieces as Aaron said he was really interested in hearing the Adcom as well. Aaron's wife Michelle was there and she was just as interested in hearing the difference's as the rest of us so that was really cool.

We spent some time talking about ourselves, our interest in music and audio and what got us started in this hobby. One other thing is Aaron brews his own beer and Doug and I got to taste some truely awesome Bock Aaron had made.

Aaron has recently purchased an H/K 630 which he says is a big improvement over his old JVC unit. I must say as far as reciever's go I was a bit impressed with the H/K. I'm not a reciever kind of guy but it sounded damn nice for a reciever. I think the swap is what made him realize that there can be significant differences in components.

For the first series of demo's we used his H/K as the pre-amp to run the Parasound, Adcom and Outlaws. Doug brought along some signal cable speaker cable with spades on one end and bannana's on the other for quick swapping. We did mostly 2-channel listening with the sub off as well as some HT.

All 3 amps sound very different and Aaron was really able to hear an instant difference and he even admitted that he doubted there would be a difference. (where's JohnK I wish he were there to hear the difference ) I'll let Aaron tell you his impressions, but even for me I heard a marked difference in the amps and I'm not letting my Adcom go anytime soon .

Doug had a surprise in the car he brought a tube preamp he purchased from RuSsman I believe it was the Audcom (the name excapes me right now). Modified by Gary Dodd and we hooked that up to my Adcom and WOW did that sound good. It's been a few years since I have given tubes a listen and I was impressed.

I'll let Aaron tell you his impressions and what his set-up is, but he's got the full blown audio bug now, and I think his wife Michelle does too. They are working on finishing their basement and turning it into nice HT set-up. My guess is it won't be long before Aaron moves the HT downstairs and then starts assembling a nice 2 channel system .

All in all a great afternoon, both Aaron and Michelle are great people and it was very nice of them to open their home up to complete strangers. Doug is one hellvua nice guy too. He offered to let me borrow any of his unused equipment anytime. Once I get my 9's set-up properly he said I could borrow the tube pre and also try out some of the various interconnects and speaker cables he's not currently using. :cool:

This is what it's all about people, I think Aaron & Michelle had a great time(I know I did) and he is well on his way to getting the sound he is looking for. We are all going to get together again. We want to hear Doug's Magnepans and I'd like them to come over and hear my 9's (which I'm still having issue's with, damn this hobby). Plus I wouldn't mind seeing Aaron's completed HT room and having more of his wonderful home brewed beer.

H9

P.s. We also talked about how cool it would be to meet up with some of the other local (within 100 miles or so) members. So maybe that's an option for next time. Who says you have to be on the East coast to have a gathering