[mimaximax]

Jr was present both at HiFiMan and HeadAmp. I liked it more from the BHSE than the HFM package amp.

How the Jr compared to the Raal CA1a or other headphones?

 

[chesebert]

High priced dac pecking order from the show:
Bartok 2.0 > Bricasti M3/Lina > Dave

Edit: Just realized M3 is around $5k oh boy I opened a can of on this one

 

[daveyostrow]

I stumbled upon the RME ADI2DACFS yesterday. I was immediately impressed. They had it paired with the Audeze LCD-X and they really came to life.

 

[adrianm]

High priced dac pecking order from the show:
Bartok 2.0 > Bricasti M3/Lina > Dave

Edit: Just realized M3 is around $5k oh boy I opened a can of on this one

By Dave do you mean solo Dave or Dave + M-scaler? And by Lina do you mean Lina with Clock or without?

 

[chesebert]

By Dave do you mean solo Dave or Dave + M-scaler? And by Lina do you mean Lina with Clock or without?

Dave + Mscaler and Lina + clock.

Don’t take show impression too seriously - the moral of the story is to also try M3 (don’t forget M1, Weiss and Meitner Audio) if you are in the market for a high priced dac around $10k.

 

[Aleksandar R.]

Not great. The headphone is missing some significant portion of bass and sub bass frequency and has a slightly elevated 1-2k and 6k bumps that I don’t enjoy. It does have its midrange transparency and holographic sonic trick but it was a compromised experience.

Thank you for the comment!
The choice of the pads for the show was enforced. Simply, we've had to do the show and our vendors didn't supply us more pads in time for the shipping.
The headphones will come with 2 sets of newly developed pads, both with more bass than what you've listened.

One set with slightly more bass, but retaining the ventilation of the ears and the other with full-flat response down to 15Hz bass, but without ventilation of the ears.

Both new sets of pads have the effect on the midrange response in a favorable way to what you didn't like. It's a see-saw kind of thing.

Anyhow, it's all about choices that we will have our clients make on their own, picking a pad for the session, and it's not excluded that we'll develop more versions.

As our clients at the show already know, the final pads will be sent to all our clients for free.

 

[james93]

It was a first time and a fun time for myself and my gf. As stated the crowd was low but for us being our first time, I think that was perfect. Majority of the time we walked around solo and I think that helped her tremendously as she was able to sit and listen, the vendors were very helpful, as always at events like these. The seminars were great for us and they helped her understand this "world" a little better. Even though we've been to Axpona and the local Chicago meetups including ZMFestivus, this by far is in a league all by itself.

We would like to thank all the vendors that were able to make it, all the volunteers and of course this wonderful place called Head-Fi and all who were there helping and enjoying this life.

We can't wait til next year's CanJam Chicago 2023.

 

[chesebert]

Thank you for the comment!
The choice of the pads for the show was enforced. Simply, we've had to do the show and our vendors didn't supply us more pads in time for the shipping.
The headphones will come with 2 sets of newly developed pads, both with more bass than what you've listened.

One set with slightly more bass, but retaining the ventilation of the ears and the other with full-flat response down to 15Hz bass, but without ventilation of the ears.

Both new sets of pads have the effect on the midrange response in a favorable way to what you didn't like. It's a see-saw kind of thing.

Anyhow, it's all about choices that we will have our clients make on their own, picking a pad for the session, and it's not excluded that we'll develop more versions.

As our clients at the show already know, the final pads will be sent to all our clients for free.

That's fantastic news! If the new pads are as good as you claim, it would fix most of the deficiencies I heard with the headphones. Slight elevated treble or upper mid is not a huge concern as those can be easily EQed without comprising sound quality in general, and some may actually prefer that sound signature (just not me personally). Good luck with the new pads!

 

[skeeb23]

I want to chime in here to say I thoroughly enjoyed my time at CanJam. I went with my wife on Saturday. Sadly I bought the tickets for both days but we couldn't get a sitter to watch our kids for both days.
So, I just streamlined my plan a bit since I had just the 1 day. I'll be posting a video and plenty of pictures on my YT channel, but some quick impressions I had:
- Definitely need both days even with a smaller crowd to truly get a full experience. I did not really listen to enough amp/dacs and was not able to listen to any IEM's considering all the headphones I wanted to try out.
- All venders there were super cool to talk to. They were all fairly busy so I don't like to take up too much time, especially being my first CanJam, but next time I'll steal more conversation time.
- ZMF. Just a wow for me. ZMF was so impressive that even my wife was taken by just how personal Zach and Bevin were not to mention the quality and care of their products. She got some pictures of the different headphones they had on their display and even tried some on herself. I think my favorite part was watching her enjoy listening to a VO! I got to talk to Zach a bit as well as Bevin. I had already purchased the Atrium a couple of weeks ago so this was my chance to finally see more of their products up close. The Auteur Classic was such a smooth listen. I thoroughly enjoyed it as well as the VO! I did not listen to an Atrium...call me crazy but I want the full effect of surprise when I first get to listen to it!
- DCA. Got some cool insights from Dan in his room. Also got to hear Headamp and the Raal (and new Raal) as I had never listened to these before. Very fun experience.
- Met Zeos as he was carrying around the G200 and he let me take a listen, which was nice. Funny guy!
- Audeze group was very pleasant. They gave me a hat even which I'm sure many others got one too, still was nice. I got to hear the CRBN, MM500 and LCD-5. Wow, ok and wow were my impressions in that order of those!
- ABYSS group was very informative as well. I got a more personal listen with the AB-1266 in their room on the Lina stack...holy hell they sounded incredible on that chain. I suppose for 40k for the package it should...but that was something I will not be able to experience on a day to day basis ever.
- Lastly, the Spirit group was a fun experience. I give them props for some of the most unique gear that I saw there. I took a listen as well.

Over all a great time. Fun to see my wife get a glimpse into my hobby and actually enjoy herself even though audio is not something she is interested in.

Thank you to Head-Fi group for organizing this and letting all of us share in the experience!

 

[Aleksandar R.]

The new Raal is definitely more comfortable than the SR1a, but the cups seem to be made out of polyethylene foam packaging materials that you see in laptops. I am not sure if that is just a prototype or the final product. I really hope it's prototype. I really couldn't get over that really cheap looking build quality. I only heard them at the end of the show and the source wasn't playing music I am familiar with. I thought it sounded only okay. I will spend more time with it in Socal.

Thank you for the comment! I really hope you'll like them better at SoCal!
Danny has a preference for recordings that are significant in showing certain aspects and differences in musical production, and how our headphones can show that, so it's limited in choices.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the foam and build quality.

All foams look alike, but we use Memory foam. Expanded PE is a completely different beast, but it sure does look similar.
One of the ways to change the appearance of the memory foam is that we will use the type with much smaller cell-size. This will also increase the comfort as the one with the smaller cells feels smoother to the skin. But, it will remain naked foam, unwrapped, for most favorable acoustical properties.

The cups are made of weapons grade polycarbonate. It is unbeatable in the mechanical and acoustical properties we needed them for.
The design of the cups, with all those sharp edges and corners would not be good for painted finish. The paint would quickly wear-off the corners and edges and the cups would look heavily used after one week of use. As they are now, unpainted, they will never scratch or wear off, as this material is really tough.

So, I just need to point out that build quality is a different thing than finishing appearance, speaking of which, once I fell in love with the material, we wanted to keep it as is, in it's natural form, with that mother-of-pearl effect that it has. To me, personally, that is a better finish than any paint.

The apparent simplicity of the headspring/forks design, made of one piece of Spring-Stainless Steel, requires a tremendous amount of time in manual bending in just the right way, so it's a sort of handywork that nobody but us here can afford in manufacturing, so there is a lot of man-hours effort in it, that you won't find elsewhere. And it was very hard to engineer the right mechanical behavior in just one piece of metal.
Of course, it's another thing if one don't like the design of it, but the mechanical behavior is superb and nothing will ever break or malfunction with it.

We just wanted to make a step in an unusual direction with the whole design/appearance thing, in hope that it will be appreciated for how it makes a great headphone for not so much money, so still hoping

Here's a gif of the build quality, driving a Mazda CX-30 over the cup:

That's fantastic news! If the new pads are as good as you claim, it would fix most of the deficiencies I heard with the headphones. Slight elevated treble or upper mid is not a huge concern as those can be easily EQed without comprising sound quality in general, and some may actually prefer that sound signature (just not me personally). Good luck with the new pads!

Thanks! We'll see how good they will be! I really need some luck now, while waiting for my latest iterations to arrive

The highs, including the 6k, can be adjusted by wearing placement.

The hole for fitting-in the ears inside the pads is pretty large by current standards, one of the 2-3 largest on the market, so the size allows for the headphones to me moved front or back while ears are comfortably inside the pad.
The driver is set to the front and angled 22° towards the back.
By bringing the headphones backwards, you increase the highs/upper-mid and by wearing them forwards, you decrease the highs/upper-mid. This also affect the imaging.
We didn't want to offer just one "best" position, as the users might want to dial things in, depending on the musical genre, production, preference...

As we all know, the show is a show, not the use scenario, though changing the tone balance would be quite obvious if we would play white noise at the show, for example...

It's a versatile product that would take time to find the best adjustment for and we'll work on a really good user-guide.

 

[chesebert]

Thanks! We'll see how good they will be! I really need some luck now, while waiting for my latest iterations to arrive

The highs, including the 6k, can be adjusted by wearing placement.

The hole for fitting-in the ears inside the pads is pretty large by current standards, one of the 2-3 largest on the market, so the size allows for the headphones to me moved front or back while ears are comfortably inside the pad.
The driver is set to the front and angled 22° towards the back.
By bringing the headphones backwards, you increase the highs/upper-mid and by wearing them forwards, you decrease the highs/upper-mid. This also affect the imaging.
We didn't want to offer just one "best" position, as the users might want to dial things in, depending on the musical genre, production, preference...

As we all know, the show is a show, not the use scenario, though changing the tone balance would be quite obvious if we would play white noise at the show, for example...

It's a versatile product that would take time to find the best adjustment for and we'll work on a really good user-guide.

Good point on positioning. The deviation from reference in highs/upper-mids is relatively small so I would agree that headphone positioning could positively affect the sound signature (and tailor to personal tastes and preferences). Both soundstage and spacial resolution are already pretty good with the pair at the show. Get the bottom half of the frequency response right and I think you will have a good one on your hand.

In terms of associated gear for showing RAAL in the best light, I would pick up either Emm Labs DA2 or dCS Rossini as both have seemingly endless spacial resolution - feeling like you are inside the music so to speak - that would pair very well with RAAL's unique holographic sonic nature. They both have SOTA bass reproduction so as to mitigate any deficiency in the bass (if any after the new pads).

 

[SoundJedi]

Thank you for the comment! I really hope you'll like them better at SoCal!
Danny has a preference for recordings that are significant in showing certain aspects and differences in musical production, and how our headphones can show that, so it's limited in choices.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the foam and build quality.

All foams look alike, but we use Memory foam. Expanded PE is a completely different beast, but it sure does look similar.
One of the ways to change the appearance of the memory foam is that we will use the type with much smaller cell-size. This will also increase the comfort as the one with the smaller cells feels smoother to the skin. But, it will remain naked foam, unwrapped, for most favorable acoustical properties.

The cups are made of weapons grade polycarbonate. It is unbeatable in the mechanical and acoustical properties we needed them for.
The design of the cups, with all those sharp edges and corners would not be good for painted finish. The paint would quickly wear-off the corners and edges and the cups would look heavily used after one week of use. As they are now, unpainted, they will never scratch or wear off, as this material is really tough.

So, I just need to point out that build quality is a different thing than finishing appearance, speaking of which, once I fell in love with the material, we wanted to keep it as is, in it's natural form, with that mother-of-pearl effect that it has. To me, personally, that is a better finish than any paint.

The apparent simplicity of the headspring/forks design, made of one piece of Spring-Stainless Steel, requires a tremendous amount of time in manual bending in just the right way, so it's a sort of handywork that nobody but us here can afford in manufacturing, so there is a lot of man-hours effort in it, that you won't find elsewhere. And it was very hard to engineer the right mechanical behavior in just one piece of metal.
Of course, it's another thing if one don't like the design of it, but the mechanical behavior is superb and nothing will ever break or malfunction with it.

We just wanted to make a step in an unusual direction with the whole design/appearance thing, in hope that it will be appreciated for how it makes a great headphone for not so much money, so still hoping

Here's a gif of the build quality, driving a Mazda CX-30 over the cup:

This is pretty cool. Love when manufacturers explain their design and thought process.

 

[LoryWiv]

I'd like to know what people thought of the MM-500... I found that they were neutral and lacked the midrange dip which is my only criticism of the LCD-X. The MM-500 actually reminded me of Sony and Sennheiser studio headphones in the overall sonic signature, although much more detailed and dynamic. The bass was pretty good and almost comparable to the LCD-5 that I had on hand to A/B test. Not sure if the detail retrieval and transient response was any better than the LCD-X though. I think the LCD-X is already a great performer in these aspects so not really sure if the MM-500 gained anything here. MM-500 definitely sounded more substantial or "wall of sound" to me than the LCD-5 which sounded a bit light. It was my first time listening to the LCD-5 though so take my impressions with a grain of salt.

I left some very brief comparative first impressions here: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/introducing-the-audeze-mm-500.963648/post-17015213

 

[musicman59]

High priced dac pecking order from the show:
Bartok 2.0 > Bricasti M3/Lina > Dave

Edit: Just realized M3 is around $5k oh boy I opened a can of on this one

Base M3 is $5,500
Options:
Network card + $1,000
Remote + $500
Fully balanced headphones amp + $500.

So it can go from $5,500 to $7,500 depending on options.

 

[buke9]

By far my favorite of the show. Yes crazy expensive but I don’t think I have heard better.