CanJam SoCal 2017

It is very similar to a high end convolution reverb used in studios. Impulses are taken in a certain room with a certain type of speaker and the OOYH software virtually puts you in that room and manipulates the frequency response quite a bit to give the headphones more of the character of that particular speaker and room. It gives the music a particular sense of space. I demoed it yesterday at the booth with the Koss 'stats. It's pretty cool stuff, I must say

 

Nobody heard the Edition 6 thousand dollars?

 

Yeah the one in the show should be a dual mono version, picture from reddit.

Am on the wrong side of the world.

 

Thanks! If it's anything like the supposedly amazing AHB2, then it should be something else. Also, very low power consumption with excellent power output! I'll keep my eye out for it.

 

Thanks for answering @Mithrandir41 .

He's right.
But @Thenewerguy009 , you can hear for yourself. Just put on your headphones and listen to our pre-rendered demo file:


Or you can download our free trial and try it on your system. It can be tricky to setup on some systems, but if you just use everything at default it should be easy to get working. Just e-mail me if you have any questions about setup.

Thanks,
-Darin

 

I heard em. It has a bit of that electrostat "bloom" that I heard with the HE-1 and MrSpeakers Ether ES. In fact there were quite a few similarities between the two, although the Ether ES had more bass punch. It was a really nice sounding headphone, with extremely smooth mids, and highs that aren't as piercing as the HE1000v2. I think it's a great headphone, but you'll be able to achieve just as much with the MrSpeakers Ether ES at a much lower price. I thought it was better than the Stax SR-009, which I would put behind the Ether ES as well due to lacking low end warmth.

 

Holy balls, if the ether estat had more bass punch and sounded better than the edition 6k$ then hifiman really shat the bed! Oh wait never mind they definitely shat the bed

 

Main problem with the Edition 6 is the price, not the performance necessarily. With planars you are basically looking at a tradeoff great bass punch but rolled off upper mids/treble (Audeze LCD-4, Abyss) or electrostat-like smooth mids and treble (Edition 6), whereas I think the MrSpeakers Ether ES is basically both.

 

If you couldn't didn't make it to CanJam SoCal, here is our end of the room over the two days:

 

Someone on HF is claiming that the Sprutluder died at Canjam- guessing the now-traditional driver failure?

 

Photos time... lighting was bad, as always. Some folks needed tripod to even take any photo at all.

First, some people...

Stillhart, working Cavalli's table



ampsandsound's Justin Weber



Darin lookin' handsome as always



Zach a.k.a. ZMF



Fiio's Dong Chao



And some more people...







And I need a caption for this one:

 

Some vendor's tables.

Sennheiser:



WyWires:



Beyerdynamic:



Dekoni: (they sell ear pads and ear tips, and apparently, not a lot of people know that)



Campfire Audio: (it was nice chatting to Ken about photography)



Fiio:



ZMF:



SourceAV:



Out Of Your Head:



Cavalli:



Bluewave:



Mr. Speaker:

 

It was a decent show. pretty busy, but not so busy you couldn't hear whatever gear you wanted to within about 10 mins. I really dug the Campfire Audio Lyra II and the Andromeda. In particular, I think the Lyra II sounds better than the Hifiman $2000 iem, for substantially less (around 800 less, i think. Really clean, even frequency response with amazing sub-bass. I think the Andromeda is similar, but with a more flat req response. Cheers to Ken Ball for not engaging in the ridiculous driver-wars in iem-land. I really prefer them to JH or 64audio.
I finally got to hear the Audio Zenith PMx2 (at Darin Fong's booth), and it sounds fantastic. To my ears, it has much better treble extension than any stock Oppo headphone. for me that is it's prime virtue. There's virtually no mid-bass/lower mid bloom. I think they are serious winners. additionally, the Koss 'stats are pretty frickin sweet sounding headphones for a great price. They feel cheaper than shit, but sound great, so that's that.
I've been a happy ampsandsound Kenzie owner for about a year, and when I heard that Justin had designed an new version with dual inputs and rca outs for preamp use, I wanted to check it out. There is also an option for input transformers which, I think, make the amp more dynamic and punchy. I was able to A/B it with and without transformers, and I definitely preferred it. in addition to the preamp capability, it is a quieter amp overall. The noise floor is dramatically lower. I still hold that ampsandsound is one of the best values in high end all tube amps. The Kenzie Encore is more expensive than the original, at 2k, without options. anybody who tried them at the tables and was unsatisfied with the dragonfly dac setup, I run mine out of a Gungnir MB, and it sounds phenomenal. they definitely were not running at peak performance at the show.
I tried the ahem, iriver, Kann player. This was my first time hearing an AKM 4490 implementation, and while it sounds adequate, i'm not sure I prefer it over the cirrus logic chips used in the past. But I love the storage capacity and the powerful built in amp. as an aside, I think the next gen Onkyo player sounds better (despite my apathy for ESS sabre system), but the software is pretty glitchy, takes too much time for the library to load when it starts up, and the micro sd slot loader was crooked and almost ruined my card.
I got another chance to listen to the Ether flow, and on further review, it is a tad too bright for me. On the other hand, the new Aeon sounds much more substantial through the mid-band. I find it much more pleasing to listen to than the Ether C or C flow. I don't have detailed impressions-not enough llstening time.

more impressions to come

 

So my understanding is that Ampsandsound, HifiMan, and others used either a DAP or usb dongle or something and hooked it up to uber expensive equipment expecting it to wow people.

I am a bit confused at that approach. Some others are taking high end DACs to demo gear like in the case of the iFi iCan pro being plugged into the holo Spring DAC.

Besides just being lazy is there any reason for this?

 

yeah of the tables I visited, Ampsandsound and Hifiman were the biggest culprits of this, and Cavalli had it's single ended hybrid tube amp plugged into a Hugo, but you know, some people actually like that thing.... And they had their other amps plugged into a Dave (no comment since i have no experience with this dac, but it costs a small fortune so you know). Everyone else I visited had their gear hooked up to Yggdrasil, Gungnir Multibit, Holo, etc. No f'ing clue why this happens, it makes it impossible to evaluate properly and often limits the potential of the gear in question.

 

The DAPs annoyed me as well.

 

You know what though @brencho Marv makes a good point. Except for Ampsandsound for which Justin is actually the maker of the amps. But yeah if HFMN sends a sales rep then you have lost a lot of connection to the hobby right off the bat.

Not a fan of Hugo either.

 

There were two prototype versions, stereo for DAPs and dual mono for desktop amps and all in one implementations. Both were dragged down by Benchmark DAC3 but still impressive to say the least.

Here is my highlight of the show:


Was great meeting everyone, you guys are The Best and make it all worth it.