CanJam Dallas 2024 Impressions

Too many fat audiophiles in the video. It’s embarrassing.

 

Even Danny from Raal Requisite (last guy interviewed) was there on the preview. The Raal 1995 Immanis presents plankton in a very unique/delicate/layered manner that is unique to ribbon drivers but like Utopia, it's system chain picky. Hope you get to try it

 

Chain? I think I heard these at thesource and it was DAVE + BHSE and yes it was ridiculous

 

Gungnir 2 vs Yggdrasil GS2 death match?

 

vs LIM

 

I’d really like to hear Immanis impressions from SBAF members, SBAF has consistently appreciated the strengths of the CA-1a and SR1a. The Head-Fi thread can get a bit chaotic from the sometimes cliquey all-the-gear-with-no-ear crowd

 

I had fun at Canjam overall. It was great to see @purr1n again after several years!

going into this, I guess I should state my huge preference for speakers, even more so after joining the BWC. so take my impressions with that in mind, im very speaker pilled.


most of the high end cans I heard at the show were a huge disappointment to me. I started with the Warwick Aperio, this electrostat costs a fortune, and crinkled more than any electrostat ive ever used. but in listening, it was too bright, the Goldensound Edition was better, but still not tuned appropriately I wouldn't say. this will be a common refrain for me. Imannis and Magna were also both too bright, I heard these at can jam and felt similarly. Susvara unveiled I liked more than either of those, but still didn't love them, still too bright.

The first high end can I heard that I thought was actually decent was the X9000 on the Viva amp, this was good, I kept telling Marv to go listen to them.

The best of the show for me was probably the DCA Stealth and Expanse on the CFA3 in the headamp, I think both of these cans are very well tuned, and incredible ergonomic. I could see myself getting a Stealth down the road for use at the office instead of my AirPods Max.

Another surprise for me was the ZMF Caldera Closed that Marv left at the Schiit table. I haven't liked any of the previous ZMFs ive heard, with the Atrium being the least bad of the bunch. but these Caldera's were actually really good, there was some splashiness in the highs, but nothing too egregious.



The highlight of the show was the chats I had with @schiit and Rob Watts. I probably spent 2.5-3 hours chatting with Rob one on one across the two days, about all things related to his dacs, oversampling, his design decisions, his past at deltec, the new scaler, lots of interesting details and interesting products coming down the pipe.

I also very much enjoyed talking to Jason about the upcoming custom delta sigma dac from schiit, this is a very interesting product to me and I can't wait for it to launch. Was also great to get his perspective on some ongoing discussions ive been having with friends offline about different amplifier topologies, the tradeoffs of push pull vs single ended, and multiple paralleled vs single devices. Shooting the schiit about all the audio rigs he'll be putting into his new house, theater stuff and schiits place in the market was great too.

I always love to get the perspective of the engineers actually designing these products and I want to thank them both for being so liberal with their time.

I hope everyone else had fun!

 

Yes please! I loved my OG Stax’s I got in the late 70’s to death… they got pretty trashed/broken in one of my cross country moves sometime in the last 30 years or so…

It’d be amazeballs to compare them to my Koss’; albeit I’d need to DRIVE them… <sniff>

 

Did anyone other than Marv get a chance to hear the new Grado at either Schiit or Woo ??

I'm SUPER in on the Astrolith.

 

Do you have any impressions of it directly compared to the HP-1000 series it purports to succeed? I can't remember if @zerodeefex still has his modded pair (was that the HP-1 with the polarity switch or no? Cannot recall) but a proper comparison between them would be grand. Measurements too!