[sonance]

While I don't usually do audio show reports, I thought I'd post about the New York Audio Show 2015 because of the increased presence of head-fi related showings at this show, which I think is a general trend in most audio shows that have been historically speaker-centric.
 
The show was held over three days at the Rye Brook Hilton outside of NYC, which, I understand got some flak due to it's location from some show-goers (or no-goers from the comments on facebook), who would prefer to have it in Long Island, I believe. I have no idea why anyone but a Long Islander would prefer this, since LI is hell to get to for people in NJ and CT (IMHO), but I digress. Pictures are not my own, unfortunately. Here are some of the head-fi related things I saw at the show:
 

1. Master and Dynamic, a NYC based company introduced a few new headphones. Their stuff is really well finished and attractive. I personally am not that interested in bluetooth headphones, so will gloss over their $560 MW60s (and a more expensive 'Luxury' edition), but they also showed their solid brass $200 earbuds which might be of interest to those looking for something different in the portable space
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1. Care Audio, a NJ dealer had two different displays, I'll start with the one in the room shared with ifi:
   1. The Hifiman HE-1000 driven by a microZOTL 2 tube amp, sounded very, very good indeed. This is my first listen to these cans. While it's not "startling" like a fully optimized / modded HD800, the music just flows. Rather than trying to impress, it just gets out of the way and makes you think of nothing but the music, which is not an easy trick to pull off in show conditions. I listened to a few tracks, and from jazz to orchestral to rock, they just handled the music effortlessly. Given the size of the headphones, these are much more comfortable on the head than the LCD series, but the drivers looked enormous up close. I also had another run-in with a different pair of HE-1000s later..
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   2. Listening to the LCD-XC after the HE1000 was a letdown. I have heard the LCD-XC before and I don't know if it was the back-to-back comparison to the HE-1000 or the full chain, but these just didn't sound anywhere near as good as I remember. They are still good 'phones, don't get me wrong, and open vs. closed may not be a good comparison, but that's my $0.02. No comparison to the HE-1000
   3. The microZotl 2 was not really on my radar before but I will have to look into it. The price was a relatively reasonable $1100 I believe - although with the HE-1000 some may prefer to go big

 

1. iFi also had a booth, and they were showing their usual wares, and also... the tube powered, ifi "Can Pro" not sure I got that name right - (here's a post about it from iFi) . This amp is not what I expected from iFi, given their small amp slant. This box sounds to be a regular swiss army knife of an amp - full solid state, full tube or hybrid mode. It has balanced and unbalanced outputs, with a motorized balanced Alps Pot. Tube complement is slated to be a pair of GE 5670s. Most surprising (to me) is the plan to add a proprietary Stax Energizer box with "1700v Peak to Peak maximum output" - not sure what the rails actually run at - 425V? but this sounds pretty interesting to me. It was driving another pair of HE1000s (soon to be a trend!) The amp at the show was more of a gun metal than the silver amp below. Of course iFi also had their usual portable and mini-desktop stack, which is not something I'm actively looking into at this time, so I will gloss over the rest of their showing, since I didn't see a balanced portable amp
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1. Justin from HeadAmp had three lovely phones on display - the HE-1000 driven my the GS-X Mk II, the Stax SR-007 driven by the Aristeus and the Stax SR-009 driven by BHSE (there may have been others that I couldn't see through the spectacle of this triumvirate)
   1. First the SR-007, it sounded just lovely, probably meeting or besting my very recent memory of the HE-1000s. I think this may well be a game of rock-paper-scissor though, after listening to each TOTL headphone (or near TOTL depending on your opinion), you hear something it does better than the others
   2. Then the SR-009. And the BHSE. Absolutely great. I almost bought the pair right then and there. Except you can't really just get a BHSE. And it's bloody expensive. But when you listen.. I can't explain it - it just makes sense, the price, the pain of tubes, the space, the heat - all of that doesn't matter. Buying it just makes perfect sense at the time. If you listen, wallet beware! I think the combo of this amp and the SR-009 is so much better than the Aristeus with the SR-007, that it's not a fair comparison. I know some prefer the 007s, but not these two full chains - they are not comparable, IMHO. The Aristeus was running at greater than 3 o'clock position (i.e. volume turned up relatively high for 'normal' listening volumes) and back to back did not have the dynamics or the openness of it's big brother
   3. Then the HE-1000. This was being driven a little louder than the others by the GS-X mkII through the same source (Ayre DAC) but it just felt like it was missing something. While the GS-X is a real contender among SS amps, I almost get the feeling that this is not going to be everyone's ideal pairing. Within a minute of listening though, you forgot about that feeling and were drawn into the music. Since I'd listened to the HE1000 for a while I pressed on, but will not forget the back-to-back on the two was just startling in how it changed my impression of the headphones I'd just listened to a few minutes earlier. I've heard the SR-009 twice before, but not with the BHSE, and it is a spectacular pairing, erasing all thoughts of 'too bright' and 'too revealing'

 

1. Finally one tiny little tidbit of non-headphone listening - I finally got to listen to the Devialet Phantom. For those that don't know about these speakers or about Devialet, I wont go on too much about them other than to say they made a huge splash late last year, and then at CES (IIRC). This is a 'mini' and 'wireless' speaker but it has a gigantic amp, and was supposedly able to put out a dis-proportionate amount of bass using proprietary DSP-like control over its sealed woofer's excursion. All the usual audiophile blogs and magazines made it sound miraculous, and the hyperbole from Devialet themselves made me very very suspicious, and yet I've been quite curious to check them out. In a small room, they were being driven as a stereo pair connected via some kind of a linking box, and they were - well, tremendously loud and seeing the driver move what looked like an inch  and a half completely belied the lack of clearly audible distortion. This was the "3000W" model (each). Because of the multiple people in the small room, I couldn't get a good sense of imaging, but the giant open baffle speakers behind them that I heard later, being driven by an astonishingly cool looking reel-to-reel analog source showed that you can get good imaging in a small room. But at 10 times the cost. Or maybe 100 times. I may go to a dealer and listen to the phantoms in a more ideal settting and also check out the very impressive D200 integrated, which mates to specific speakers very well, from what I've read.
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2. The only other bit of non-megabuck speaker impressions I will post is that the small Technics SB-C700 speaker which was purported to be a KEF LS50 killer (!) at a similar price was not really shown off to it's best here. I will reserve judgement until I hear it again in a better setting.
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I will also add that I am not a huge fan of making very serious impressions at a show from short listens. They tell you something, just not the whole picture, and shows are just too noisy and there are too many unknowns and new elements involved in the performance of gear at a show. I find that my final impression of phones tends to change significantly after about a week of listening at home, so take it all with a proverbial pinch of NaCl.

 

[mrip541]

Thanks for the impressions! That location though... This is the first year you couldnt get to the show on the subway. Even if you took the train up you still had to walk like 2 miles. Was anybody there?

 

[sonance]

Thanks for the impressions! That location though... This is the first year you couldnt get to the show on the subway. Even if you took the train up you still had to walk like 2 miles. Was anybody there?

I can see that - a true city showing would have drawn a bigger crowd. The hotel is definitely not in an easily walkable space - I drove so I didn't check out the train arrangement (shuttle? taxi?). I only went one of the three days, so I don't know about the other days, but yes, several rooms I went into were quite crowded, and a seminar I was interested in was full enough that I didn't want to squeeze in since I was late. Not sure about overall attendance. I believe there were fewer vendors than other years, but more head-fi stuff.