World of Headphones in Heidelberg, March 2nd

Not 100% sure yet, but I’ll probably visit the World of Headphones fair in Heidelberg, Germany, on March 2nd.

Among other stuff, it seems they’ll show the new Raal 1995 headphones. There’s also a headphone museum round the corner (from headphone.shop) including a Sennheiser Orpheus that can be listened to!

See https://www.highendsociety.de/woh-heidelberg-2.html for the official page with strangely little information, or https://headphone.shop/world-of-headphones-x-headphone-camp-march-02-2024-at-heidelberg/ for much more.

Does anybody else plan to come and maybe meet there?

 

I´m considering visiting the fair as well. Will tell once I´ve decided...

 

Back from Heidelberg.

Nice location, not big, and not too crowded, especially in the afternoon; I could listen to everything I wanted to hear.

It was great to meet @Sonofsin in person, thanks again for the coffee and for the discussions!

Most important impressions:

• I tested a few amps with the HEDDphone Two. More on that later in the HEDDphone thread, but my takeaway is that I don’t feel pressed at all to buy a new one, my Meier Jazz FF seems to be a great choice for my HP.
• First time hearing e-stats for me. I liked the square Stax better than the round ones, which were too hot in the treble for my taste. Liked the detail and timbre, a bit similar to the HEDD, but I missed bass.
• I liked the Atrium 2024 a lot, while the Verite Open was not my cup of tea.
• Listened to some other stuff, wasn’t really blown away by anything except: The Raal 1995 Immanis. Oh. My. God. I’ve never heard anything that came even remotely close before. Unbelievable levels of detail, a … kind of “exactness” from down low to up high, combined with a great musicality. Treble levels were a bit higher than I usually like, but never harsh or fatiguing and still within the bounds that sound natural to my ears, though some recordings sounded quite sibilant. I wonder if this much “in your face” detail might even be too much over time, but listening for some 10 or 15 minutes, I was totally blown away. It was powered by a Feliks Envy – my guess is that tubes are more or less a must for this headphone, as the slightest digititus will probably sound awful. But that’s just speculation, of course. Anyway: I will never pay so much for a headphone, but if I wanted to go north of € 4,000,–, I’d probably rather save up for a few years until I could afford this one. At least that’s what I thought when I heard it, as I said I’m not sure how much I would like it in the long run. If you ever have the chance to listen to this headphone, don’t miss it!

 

Visiting ZMF's website I see some models now are appended with "2024", but others are not. Does anyone know if this is just a batch/run designation, or a cosmetic (wood/stain/hardware) designation or it significant in that it indicates driver/cup changes that affect SQ?

 

As per this Head-Fi post, it is just cosmetic.

 

Trying to find out which was the ZMF I liked, I looked at the website and found it must have been an Atrium 2024, but that’s all I know.

 

Cosmetic changes are in fact all that is discussed - @zach915m uses "Atrium" without "2024" in the OG post even though "Atrium 2024" appears to be the new name.

I went ahead and asked on the thread itself just for clarification... Maybe Schiit and others has me obsessing over 'silent revisions'.

 

Hehe, yes, silent revisions … The fact that I really don’t get what reviewers are talking about regarding missing bass at the HEDD2 had me asking the guys at the HEDD booth if maybe something was changed during the production of the batches (I have one from batch four). But no, there wasn’t.

 

Would have loved to be present but with the little one...

Great that we continue to have some good alternative audio shows in europe.

Hopefully next time!

 

Well, High End Munich in just over 2 months

 

Thanks to Zottel for bringing the show to my attention - and for the nice time spent together in the sun! For sure, it was good to meet another german mad head.

The location and the atmosphere was really good. Good gear was there as well. Extra bonus points, because typically it was possible to listen to music of your own choice and you could plug in your own gear.

Some room was left for optimization: most of the time, there were no signs or notes what headphone models you were actually dealing with. So you had to do a Google image search on ZMF or DanClark Audio to find out, what headphone you are listening to.

Also there were not many reasonable or well curated SYSTEMS.

Being a long-term HD600 user, my personal take-away points from the show are the following:

- E-Stats don't fit my taste in music. I appreciate their qualities, but Trip-Hop, Big Beat, Yello, Royksopp is not what they have been made for.
- Orthos/planars do have potential for me. I am picky about timbre, but at least under show conditions there were some that would do fine for me - not too plasticky
- Zach from ZMF has a good idea how music should sound like. If I were in the market for a headphone above 2 grand, ZMF would be on my short list.
- Special award to Dan Clark for being able to do comfortable headphones
- Special award to MalValve for bringing the hardest porn to the show. A massive tube amp that is not even on their website. Maybe it was this one, just in rectangular shape:
https://www.malvalve.de/Headamp1-E.htm
- Brown Starfish award in visual design goes to iCan Phantom. That thing looks like somebody accidentally glued together a silver and a black box. For 3.800€. To be fair, it made a AKG 701 (100€) sound pretty good.
- Notable headphones this side of 1.000€ were LCD-2 classic and Meze 109 Pro. Maybe Aeon Flow with careful system matching. But very few headphones under 1.000€ present.
- Going beyond an HD600 & Vali2+ would not be cheap.

It was a nice day!