This year's Autumn event, as usual, took over the upper half of Nakano Sun Plaza. Five floors and hundreds of manufacturers is nothing less than an overwhelming experience, and I could barely, and inadequately cover the manufacturers and products I was interested in. Meeting friends again was the most fun, as well as meeting people in the industry who had travelled from overseas to be here.
I met Ray Kimber, who has had a long relationship with Sony, who showed me what was on his Walkman. Have a look and see if you can figure out what was special about the track he was playing.
Then, of course, there are the locals, such as this weird guy who borrowed my camera to take a selfie:
Nathan (Shigzeo)
FUJIYA AVIC Store
Friday afternoon before the show is the time I always drop by the Fujiya Avic headphone store and check out what they have on display. They had managed to avoid having to rent a larger space by having the IEM displays on the outside. Also, if you want to sit down and listen to a piece of gear, they have a lovely chair and table space for that purpose.
APEX Sangaku + Korg Nutube
Pete Millet, who is quite familiar to the older generation of Head-Fi members, if not the newer, contacted me to say that by lucky chance, he would be in Tokyo at the time the festival was on. He brought with him his latest amp which uses the Korg Nutube. Essentially the Nanotube is a modern, ground-up tube design which doesn't require large amounts of power.
Korg kindly offered to display the Sangaku on their table, alongside a display of other small amps and a pyramid of Nutube. Not requiring a lot of power, Pete could make it much smaller than usual. However the sound is not small -- with a touch of harmonic warmth, the Sangaku is a fast-sounding hybrid amp that delivers a spacious presentation with both HD800 and the Ether Flow.
To demonstrate just how low-power it is, Korg also had a number of amps, including a 9V powered portable on display.
ALO Audio Vega IEMs
One of my first stops at the show was to see Ken Ball, whose Andromeda IEMs had impressed myself, as well as many other people. The Vega announcement had taken everyone by surprise and I was very keen to audition his take on a single-dynamic driver pair of IEMs.
Suffice to say, they were way up there. It was the same instant great feeling I'd had with the Andromedas, yet with that dynamic driver kick added to the mix. Considering I'd only shortly before auditioned the HiFiMan Shangrila and Sennheiser HE-1 set, pretty much anything I listened to by that stage had to be pretty impressive, and these were.
HiFiMan Shangri La
L-R: Jude and George Tashiro (from Head-Fi Japan), HiFiMan Japan staff, Shangri La tube close-up.
On Friday evening HiFiMan Japan kindly invited us to spend a couple of hours listening with the Shangrila at their new office. Jude had brought his Chord DAVE with him, so we would get to hear the rig at its best.
What we heard was an incredibly spacious presentation that reflected the stereo image of the music to an uncanny degree. Putting on something like a recent Chesky binaural album (Alexis Cole or Macy Grey for example) the singer was spot-on in front and the instruments far out to the sides, as if they were in the room. What is more, according to Fang Bian, the design, which he has been working on for 8 years, still has a couple of changes in store to improve the sound quality even further.
MrSpeakers
Dan Clarke was joined this show by Cavalli Audio and the Ether Flow and C Flow were being demoed through a prototype Liquid Tungsten. The voicing of the electrostats has also been finalised, and Dan suggested I try some techno with them, as they are voiced unlike other 'stats out there. The sound is closer to that of the Ether Flow, and with the Liquid Lightning amp the pairing does a great job with techno and electronica, whereas it was a bit subdued for my tastes with acoustic music. However with a Blue Hawaii, which had at the last show, Dan reckons they are more lively-sounding. Interestingly, they'll work at a higher bias voltage, so it will be possible to kick them up a notch or two with a suitable amp.
OBravo
Of all the speakers I've auditioned, my realistic ideal would be a pair of Heil tweeter-based ELACs, and my desktop speakers are ADAM ARTists which use them as well, so it has always been interesting to audition OBravo's headphones and IEMs which use those drivers.
Reputedly the most expensive IEMs on the planet, the EAMT-1x, with their wood, metal and ceramic housing, indeed have a presentation unlike any other. I was expecting them to be bright, but the tuning was quite a bit darker than expected out of my AK380, so I reckon they'll require a longer audition to get a real handle on their capabilities.
Sonoma
With the researchers at Warwick University wondering what to do with 8 years of research, Sonoma, famous for their DSD-recording workstations, came up with the idea to use the technology in headphones, and the result is the M1 headphone system, a complete electrostatic rig. The High Precision Electrostatic Laminate can be manufactured very easily, and is installed in single-strator (rather than the usual two-side dual strator) mount inside the headphones. The amp outputs 1300V, a consequence of the single-sided design, and includes an ESS Sabre DAC.
David Kawakami of Sonoma and Martin Roberts of Warwick Audio Technologies were on hand to talk about the system in detail. Rather than try and write it all down, I asked him if he'd do it for us, on video:
Even though I couldn't try it with my own music, as the prototype on display had stopped working when someone else plugged in their own device previously, the sound quality was very impressive, with the light, airy and detailed sound typical of high-end electrostats. What is more, they reputedly have a frequency response that is pretty much flat down to 10 Hz.
Given the whole rig is going to be $4995, this could be a single-purchase end-game option.
Van Nuys
The guys at Van Nuys have bags, pouches and accessories for just about everything you can imagine, and even if they don't, many of their models come in a range of sizes and can have numerous different accessories attached. As usual, they had a very small sample (I'm really not kidding here) of their range, mostly consisting of pouches for DAPs and other audio gear.
DigiFi
One of the coolest things about living in Japan is that you can buy a magazine with a DIY hi-fi kit. What is more, you can link the kits together to make a whole mini-system. DigiFi had a variety of kits and parts on sale, as well as examples of completed kits and systems.
Pioneer
The Stellanova system was once again on display. Controllable from your smart phone and available in multiple colours, it has a very minimal footprint, very much suited to small Japanese apartments or people who want an unobtrusive system. It also includes a CD ripper so that you can transfer all your music.
Wikia / Head-Fi Japan
Me, taking a break at the Head-Fi Japan table.
Myself, Ethan, Sean (Anakchan) and George. Photo by Jude.
Third_eye (Ethan), who is the producer of CanJam Global, came out to the show to meet everyone. We didn't forget to take him to Akihabara and fill him up with local cuisine.
Ultrasone
25th Anniversary Jubilee Edition.
Spacious! With stunning wood and a pure silver inlay, they are beautiful headphones. Due to the queue, we were limited to 3 minutes of listening. Ultrasone seems to have taken what they learned from the Edition 5 a step further with these headphones. Typically for Ultrasone, the bass is quite prominent, but they don't sound the least like a pair of closed-back headphones. The main downside is that they aren't going to be as detailed-sounding as a top pair of planars or electrostats, which in their price range they would be more competing with. However they are a limited edition pair for people who like what Ultrasone does.
Edition 8 EX
CEO Michael Willberg Explained to me that they’d taken all the feedback from customers about the Edition 8 and upgraded the model to the EX. Larger all around, they have easily detachable ear pads with more space and a higher quality detachable cable that uses Lemo connectors. Underneath are angled drivers, first seen in the Edition 5 add to the S-Logic design.
This brings out a very spacious sound for a pair of closed-backed headphones, much like the Jubilee, solidifying the Edition 8 as the most premium closed-backed headphones available. While the detail retrieval and absolute lack of harshness didn’t seem to match other headphones in its price range, the heavier bass reproduction will suit some tastes much better.
Tribute 7
Probably the first thing I noticed in the Edition 7 Tribute box was the included frequency response graph, which included the frequency response of the original Edition 7.
After listening to the more spacious-sounding Edition 8 EX, and Jubilee Edition, the Edition 7 Tribute was a technical step back, with a more closed-in presentation. However, one thing it did that the others didn’t was make me want to listen through whole tracks. It had a wonderfully engaging, but not overblown sound. After listening I completely understand why it was considered to be something of a legendary pair of headphones.