The DC Hi-Fi Group Meeting at John Gatski’s Home May 18, 2019 by Paul Elliott.

Spring time in our area is supposed to be such a lovely time and it seemed to be a perfect time for John to have an open house for our group.  Best laid plans of mice and men. Man was it hot and sticky. The warmest day so far this year! It happened to fall on Saturday so we suffered through it with beer and sliders. Even a surprise birthday cake for John, still a baby at a mere 60 years, could not dampen our spirits. But we were damp. There was a steady stream going in and out of the house to cool off.

We sort of muddled through a meeting. Mike McGary of McGary Audio was there letting us know what is new with his amp company.  He let us know that his newest amp the SA-2 is in production. A P-P KT-88 stereo amp pushing  80 watts. I saw and heard this amp at Axpona in April and it sounded great moving air easily with Salk speakers. Mike has updated the look from industrial sheik of the SA-1 to retro Googie architecture (also known as “populuxe” or “doo-wop”).

Can you imagine? It was so hot that Tom Perazella only spoke three sentences. Something about some stuff. LOL!

Anyway we did have fun. It was not all sweat and chafe. Giveaways were just three this month.  Michael got a 8TB USB drive (darn that’s what I wanted). Chris got a Parasound ZDAC, and Peter got a CD. See you all next month.

Paul Elliott provided pictures and the narrative for this report.

Gary Gill graciously provided his home for an afternoon of good eats, good drinks, good talks, and good listening.

Dennis Clark, owner of the Leesburg Listening Room, was the special guest for this meeting. This is a new home audio dealer located about 10 miles west of Dulles just off Rt. 15. He carries PS Audio, Legacy Speakers, VPI, and many more notable products. The “Store” is located in a beautiful home in Creighton Farms private community. Dennis was exuberant in describing his philosophy of sound presentation.

Chris Barker talked about a very new affordable DAC called the Khadas Tone Board. He also mentioned he had completed a turntable kit build using the SRM Tech Azure Turntable Kit using Rega parts. It was also mentioned that Emotiva was now shipping mono block amplifiers featuring IcePower modules. Finally, there was a brief mention of the brand new Magnepan LRS ribbon speakers. Tom Perazella told us about interesting new developments using HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) technology to make headphones present a more natural sound stage.

We then clambered upstairs to Gary’s dedicated listing room for a listen to the iFi Pro DAC ($2500). This DAC is interesting because it is designed with a high-quality DSD up conversion/direct DSD engine and custom Alps volume section with a selectable tube or solid state buffer analog stage. The UK designed, China manufactured, DAC decodes to 768khz in PCM and up samples to 1024khz in DSD using the Crysopeia FPGA Digital DSD Engine. The PCM/DSD core DAC chip is from Burr Brown. The iFi Pro has tons of features including an onboard micro-SD card player that can be accessed via a Wi-Fi phone app (DLNA). Five user selectable digital filters are also available. Russ from Vinyl Revivers loaned a beautiful pair of Dynaudio Special Forty speakers. Gary’s room was tough for these small bookshelf speakers but if you got up close in a near field position you could hear what these speakers can do. They are very nice and would do very well in a small den or listening room that is better damped than Gary’s echo chamber.

Regular raffle winners included Walter and Gary Gill.

See you next month at Russ’s

DCHFG Member Paul Elliott provides the text and photos for this month’s meeting.

Audiophilism [sic] (not a real word but it should be) is a lonely hobby. Think about it. One spends hours working on their kit, trying out a new this or that. Maybe you received a new LP or digital download, marveling about the bass or the glorious highs or the blooming midrange. But there you are in a room full of boxes with knobs and wires – alone.  At some point, you want to share or show off this stuff. This is where the Audio Club comes in.  A place to discuss what is new or important to you or your system. A place to meet others in the same boat that you are in. Floating along in a sea of bits and bytes, distortions and resonances, tubes and cartridges. Now you can find many others with the same doubts and concerns that you have whether to spend money on a widget or not that will take your system to the stratosphere and beyond. 

This is the great thing about Audio Clubs. They bring like minded people out of their dedicated sound rooms and into a room full of life.

It is always a great pleasure meeting at Dave’s house, a lovely place in a beautiful setting. We had quite a crowd on a rainy Saturday, maybe forty members all looking forward to an afternoon of comradeship, good food and drink, and listening to the new Bryston B135 V3 Integrated Amp/DAC.

So, here we are in Dave’s beautiful home listening to the B135 V3 with a pair of NHT Classic 4. The Byrston certainly had a lot of punch, speed and a high end that is (for me) the Bryston house sound, which is not my cup of single malt.

Dave’s journey is an interesting one. He at one point joined the DIY club and started a thread about what he was building and saying with confidence that he felt he was going in the right direction. Dave invited the DIYer’s over for a listen and to put it mildly our comments were not very subtle with what we heard. Every time I have heard Dave’s system in subsequent visits, I kept hearing vast improvements. Each time I said to myself, it cannot get better but it does. I feel his main system, in the basement, is one of the best I have heard – anywhere. Drop the scotch.

So, I hope all our members of the DC Hi-Fi Group are taking advantage of the combined knowledge available. As they move along their journey to optimizing their system, they can then sit back and enjoy the music.