CanJam NYC 2017 - Impressions Thread

any impressions?

 

Not that I'm comfortable enough sharing quite yet, as it's still in prototype, but it should be good. Cheers

 

I visited the Campfire Audio booth at CanJam this weekend and spoke with Ken for about 10-15 minutes. He is really a standup guy who is genuinely passionate about his craft. He talked about focusing this year on his entry level stuff so that there are good options for people at all price points.

In regards to the headphone prototype, he said that the thing holding up the production was the finish of the aluminum. He still wasn't completely satisfied with the finish. I'm definitely don't feel comfortable enough giving a detailed description of the sound, but they had good sound isolation and had a solid bass presence without feeling bloated. Furthermore, he designed the headphones to be tuned, similar to the Ether tuning felt but even easier to install.

 

Thanks to @thegunner100 for organizing dinner and the awards presentation. It was great to see everyone, as usual.

Some impressions from CanJam:

Sony Z1R
The new Sony flagship was the highlight of the show for me. Of all the things that I listened to, this impressed me most. Standard "show conditions" caveats apply, but in my listening time with these, I was hearing sparkly, lively treble, great tone through the midrange, and impressive bass. The bass is significant. Can't tell yet if it's overdone or one of those "boosted but in a restrained and tasteful way" situations. Impressive resolution and detail, even with the noise of CanJam. A very coherent, beautiful sound overall. Can't wait to hear these on the loaner tour on my own setup.

And the build! Right up there with the best of what Sony can do. Everything feels thoughtful and considered. The headband adjustment mechanism is so well done. The mesh earcups are unique and beautiful. They may be the lightest flagship (maybe only HD800 is lighter?). Comfort is excellent. Simply state-of-the-art industrial design. *Huge* respect for Sony on this front.

These were being driven by their new DAC/Amp, which sounded great and is also executed at an extremely high level of industrial design. The source was their top-of-the-line gold DAP. Ridiculously heavy with a sluggish interface. Not sure who this player is for. Definitely not me.

Sonoma Model One
Despite having a very nice chat with one of the booth guys showing this off, I did not like what I heard. I started with some classical and vocal tracks which sounded decent. Mids and treble seem to be decently executed. Nothing ground-breaking, but good enough for show conditions. Bass is where these fall apart. On my earlier tracks, bass sounded articulate and accurate, but on bass-heavy tracks from Daft Punk and Beyonce, the bass just broke up and was replaced by a tubby, farting sound. Not good. (Is this what high levels of bass distortion sounds like?) The design of these is very HD650-like, but executed in magnesium instead of plastic. The clamp was way too tight for my head.

Audeze LCD4
A miss overall for me. I did not find these engaging to listen to at all. Not sure whether to attribute the overall flat-ness to the setup or the headphones, but these sounded lifeless and cold. Very unexpected coming from Audeze. The combination of materials -- carbon fiber, wood, chrome -- is garish and unappealing. Comfort is slightly improved over LCD-3 due to the carbon fiber suspension headband.

Mr. Speakers AEON
These sounded good in my brief session with them. Nice tonality with a good balance between macrodynamics and details. Ergonomics of these were excellent. The look of these doesn't do it for me -- they look "futuristic" in an weird sparkly fiberglass way -- but they are very light and comfortable.

I listened to these at the Schiit booth, connected to a Modi Multibit/Vali 2 stack, which was great. If I ever take my main rig home from my office (Gungnir Multibit→BW2), I would strongly consider this stack to replace it. The Schiit booth, by the way, is very well done. Their full line was on display, and they have custom signage for every station with details on the stack you are listening to. So good. There was ample space between setups. Just a very inviting and well executed booth setup.

David Robinson
Seemingly ageless and very tall.

 

pretty off-topic but it's a curious thing about David Robinson showing up at these audio shows. I googled to see if he had some history of audiophilia he has spoken about but couldn't find any articles really. I wonder if he's an active incognito member on any of the forums.

 

Well he does play the sax so maybe his love of music runs deep.

 

Did you listen to the Eikons?

 

I actually asked Jude that very question, and he told me that David is authentically interested in audio and likes coming to the shows. The first time he was coming to a show he contacted Jude and said something to the effect of "you probably don't know who I am, but I'd like to come to one of your shows..." and of course Jude knew who he was. Was very easy to see where he was in the room this weekend, you just had to scan for the 7 foot guy. He seemed really cool as well. Cheers

 

Seems like David has the same problems as the rest of us. I was standing next to him at the ZMF booth (he seemed very interested in their cans) and overheard him tell Zach that he needs headphones for the bedroom since his wife doesn't want to listen to his music at night. I can totally relate.

 

I totally forgot about that.

As much as I cringe at the SBAF comparisons of Jude to a certain NE Asian dictator I couldn't help but think of said dictator hanging out with Dennis Rodman. Thanks a lot, SBAF.

 

The Moistest:

 

I spent a small amount of time with the Eikons, but not enough to say anything definitive about them other than Rage Against the Machine sounded great. I am not personally in the market for a closed back and their size/aesthetics are not my thing. I was also distracted by David Robinson, who was two feet away from me talking *serious* shop with Zach and the other people working his table.

 

Please elaborate. Most interesting thing in the thread.

 

I wasn't there when @Boops was at the both (at least I don't think; that would be quite a coincidence if we were there at the same time), but David Robinson stopped by the booth on Sunday to ask about putting buying a pair of the Paduk Eikon. I didn't hear the details (the Eikon do a pretty good job of blocking out sound), but at the end of their conversation Zach told the Admiral that if he wanted he could come back at the end of the day and have one of the show demos.

 

I was there Saturday. I didn't hear their whole conversation, but I overhead them talking about business stuff, how ZMF started, something about private equity (?). Seemed to be a wide-ranging discussion. He must have been there for nearly an hour. When I looped back around, he was still there being filmed by the InnerFidelity correspondent for the video she was working on.

 

Maybe he wanted some sax-centric tuning on a new pair.

 

A little bit late to the party with my impressions, but here we go! I didn't listen to too much because my level of fucks given is much lower now that I've settled on my setups. The venue was also small for the amount of vendors there were, so it was packed and loud on Saturday.

First off, thanks to the guys who made it out to CanJam on Saturday to present the awards and for dinner. @schiit and @KenBall, we demand pictures in the office! Seems like there were a couple of guys that I missed at the meet, but hopefully I'll catch you guys in the next meet.

Sony Table
Z1R - Warm with a nice sense of space and sparkle. Closed headphone done right. I tried these out of the TA-ZH1ES being fed by my ZX2's USB output.

WM1-Z - Like everyone has already said, this thing is heavy! I tried it with my Andros (with their provided 4.4mm balanced cable) and it is a incremental upgrade over the ZX2 but not worth 2x the price imo. The WM1-Z is a little bit bassier due to the slightly lower OI.

TA-ZH1ES - Sounds like a souped up ZX2 with a slightly warm and organic tuning. No solid state nasties here. It's a little bit leaner with the Andros due to the higher OI but had good synergy otherwise. I wish I had tried The modded HD800 also sounded like it paired well, although the ambient noise was too loud to make any more judgements. The main thing holding it back is its price point of $2200, but you do get both an amp and dac. It would be nice to bring out its potential with a non-usb source and to test it as an amp-only. It's also fairly compact and looks very well finished.

Fiio
Fiio X5 Gen 3 - Good improvement over Fiio's previous daps. Still warm and soft, but that may be due to AKM's Velvet thing. Synergized well with the Andros. 2 microsd slots is nice to have for large libraries. Balanced and unbalanced outputs provide the same power. @miceblue it was nice to meet someone from the HF Anime thread! I wanted to talk to you a bit more but the Press guy was taking too long .

ZMF Audio
Eikon - I heard both the Cherry and the Padauk verions. The wood makes a pretty big difference in sound with the Cherry being more neutral and airy (my preference) while the Padauk was warmer with more subbass.

Empire Ears
I spent a pretty significant amount of time at this table trying their IEM selection and being invited to listen to their newer models and unnamed prototype. I spoke with Jack and it seems like they are still interested in providing loaners for SBAF.

Spartan - EE's definition of neutral is more lean than what I'm used to and leaner than the UERMs.

Zeus XIV / XR w/o Adel - Not bad, but very expensive for what they are. Mids were kind of thick and the treble presence could have been brought a little higher on both models.

Savage 9 - I thought this model was very good sounding and coherent. Kind of has the modded hd650 sound with a downsloping treble. The S9 sounded better without the Adel module, which significantly changes the bass presentation. It makes the bass sound somewhere between a dynamic driver and a BA driver. Pretty good for around $1000 but the Andros beat it in SQ.

Unnamed model - @Vansen spoiled it for me, but it was easy to hear that this was a hybrid model. The dynamic drivers worked well in slower music but felt disjointed when listening to faster music. Okay but could use some work.

Hifiman
RE-$2000 - The fit on this thing was awkward and I can tell that the cable will break in less than a year. Otherwise the sound was fairly good for a DD but not worth the asking price.

Edition 6 - Plugged into a EF-1000 amp, which was fed by some dap with an ancient UI and controls. Listened to Hotel California (Hell Freezes Over) for 1 minute before I promptly put the ED6 down and walked away. It deserves the limp dick award if we ever made one.

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As for the next NY SBAF mini meet, it probably won't be til later this year.

 

Can you please compare the ZMF dynamics to the Sony Z1R? Are they competitive if price is not a factor? Thanks!

 

Sounds like the $8000 Duo is a bust.