CanJam SoCal 2022 (September 17-18, 2022)

I was planning on attending both days, but I wasn't feeling well after Saturday so I ended up going home early. I still had a lot of fun meeting people like Zach and Bevin along with other youtube reviewers I used to watch back in my early days! Canjam for me this year was a lot different than my other times attending because I was mainly there representing ETA. Sucks that we couldn't afford a booth, but maybe one of these years...


Finally met @zach915m in person! It was awesome conversing with him about the business side as well as nerding out about tube amps hehe

Also Bevin! She's even nicer in person and grateful to both of them for taking the time to hang out with us in the corner even though their room was always packed with customers

Resolve Reviews and DMS! They were both impressed with the prototype I brought along with the Minis I had

Met Zeos from Z-Reviews and he was very impressed with ETA stuff. Funny enough, I used to watch all his videos along with DMS way back before I found SBAF. The guy next to Zeos is Juan from Auribus Acoustics. He's also part of another startup like ETA so it was cool to listen to other people's passion projects.

Taron from Headphones.com trying some of ETA stuff. Very sweet guy and was surprised he already knew of ETA!

Oh and special shoutout to @insidious meme for introducing me to Warren Chi of Head-fi . Overall, I got more business cards than I could ever hope for at can jam this year... which reminds me, I need to email everyone once I recover.

We also had the SBAF dinner after the show, which was very nice to see some of the folks I haven't seen in years since the last LA SBAF meet. I forget who took the group photo so hopefully, someone posts it here eventually.

Very different vibes from the Austin meet, but it's always a good time with friends

 

This CanJam SoCal was several levels of insane this year, I was so overwhelmingly slammed on Saturday, nothing like I ever experienced at a CanJam before. Sunday was calmer and I had a chance to breathe and actually talk to folks.

Didn't get much of a chance to hear much of anything but I never do behind the table! Happy to get happy impressions for others.


Some annoying things happened, internet was absolutely shit and unreliable, download offline playlists since who wants to buffer for 30 seconds to hear 5 seconds of a song.

The attendees who put on a headphone, don't check what is plugged in and just start turning it up to find out the Susvara on their head isn't plugged in, but a Utopia 2022 audible clipping at 120dB

Looks like someone turned the Warwick Sonoma amp volume too hard or hit it accidentally, the volume pot broke but it wasn't super obvious so our unit maxed out volume much faster than their demo.

I was a dumbass, left the Enleum AMP-23R on low gain and didn't realize till day 2. People kept complaining it wasn't loud enough.

Positive notes, the Zahl HM1 is awesome sauce, by far my favorite solid state amp now. As soon as I can get one I am offloading most my other amps and some headphones.

DCA Expanse probably best DCA headphones so far. Relatively amp picky as I saw impression vary wildly to people rocking out with it to hating it. DCA headphones always divisive but had a least some folks say they dislike other DCA headphones but Expanse works for them. Though some adamant they don't like the sound.

Meze 109 Pro is dope, best tuned Meze yet plus the Advar is also surprisingly decent sounding. Meze really does seem like they have turned a page with how they tune headphones and I am all for it.

Focal Utopia 2022 is..... Fine, I wished they would have altered the sound a little more than they did. 2022 sounds like they gave it the Clear Mg treatment though to a much lesser extent. Slight boost in bass and smoothed it just a touch. Have on our demo pair right now, I still like Utopia but kinda hoped for a little more especially with the price bump.

Besides those, the Astell&Kern x Empire Ears Odyssey, SP3000, ZMF Caldera, Cayin HA-3A, and Raal CA-1a was all on the shortlist of stuff to try but never got a chance.

But as always, biggest highlight for me is seeing old friends. Some folks I hadn't seen pre-Covid and its always a pleasure to reconnect. Plus meeting new people was also awesome and helping them get started as I will never forget those who helped me get started at my first shows.

 

Thanks to you we might not get a CA-1a loaner, but rather a 911 and I'm all for it!