I enjoyed writing my thoughts on my first ever CanJam last year, so I'm going to give it another go here.
As before, I'm fairly new to the headphone world. These are my very amateur impressions, with a limited audio vocabulary, and of course under show conditions, so take with a very large pinch of salt please. It'll read more like a story than a detailed evaluation. Wherever possible, I used my ibasso dx300 with my own 4.4mm balanced cable.
First stop on arrival, ZMF, to hopefully buy some Bokehs, which I've basically been waiting a whole year for. I wanted to indulge in much wider listening this year across the floor, having been a bit shy last year, and so I only stayed to compare the Bokeh closed with the Caldera closed, having preferred the BC over the VC last year.
Of course, the CC was more refined and grown up compared to the BC to my ears, but I still really loved the fun of the BC, and so it was an easy decision to buy there and then. Lovely atmosphere in the ZMF room again, and everyone was so friendly and helpful as before. This is my BC set, which I shared earlier, and also one shot of a small selection of what they had there.
Next up, I headed straight over to Focal. I struggled previously with a sound signature that felt dry and bright to my ears. I tried the Stellia and then straight to the Utopia. Unfortunately, I didn't warm to either and decided to just move on, but more on the Utopia later!
Over to Hifiman and straight onto the Susvara, which I missed out on previously. Oh yes!, detail and soundstage in spades and with nothing missing. Very nice! , although more on this as well later too. My previous favourite listen from Hifiman was the Arya Organic btw.
I think it was at this point that I spun around and stumbled upon Elise Audio, and found myself sat down in front of this...
Hooked up to it was the Raal Imannis (I had no clue at the time what this headphone was). This is when my headphone world suddenly came crumbling down around me, in a bittersweet kind of way.
I'm not sure it was a good idea to have my first ever tube headphone amp experience be this Feliks Audio hunk of gorgeousness, as I learnt it's completely out of my budget. But hey!, why not throw a nearly 10k set of headphones on it and add in a 7k DAC for good measure! Well done Elise, flaw a newbie before he's even started why don't ya!
I absolutely loved this set up!, as I'd never heard anything so sumptuous before. Incredible weight to each note and a full bodied sound that also had loads of detail retrieval too. On the Raal Imannis it was simply heavenly to my ears!, and I preferred it to the Susvara that I heard on it the next day. I got some peekiness on some high notes from the Susvara on Bill Evans' - Peace Piece. On very brief listening, I got the impression that maybe the Susvara could be prone to this on certain tracks?, but not the Raal Imannis. Only prolonged home listening would know for sure I suppose, but that isn't going to happen.
On Elise Audio. A big thank you to the guy working around the end table with the set up above, and this set up.
He was extremely knowledgeable and very chatty with everyone I noticed. In among some great chats, where he explained how hard the Tungstens can be to drive for example (hence the brute of an amp they had paired with it!)
he also said something very profound to me. On mentioning that I struggled with the Focal sound signature in general, he told me not to write them off as synergy is everything. So obviously my ibasso DAP wasn't cutting it, lol, as I later found out on the Focal Utopia upstairs in the Hifonix summit fi room
Keeping it simple for my part 1 ramblings, I'll just finish with the Meze stand.
I sat down with the Elite hooked up to the DCS Lina stack. Somehow I found the DCS stack to be a bit on the anaemic side. I thought something wasn't right as the Elite was my highlight from last year. So I hooked up my ibasso to the Elites and suddenly I was loving them again. Maybe it's just familiarity and brain burn on my part, as I'm pretty sure with proper long term listening an 18k stack will obviously 'best' my DAP, but interestingly a fellow Canjammer said he felt the same about the DCS Lina.
Then I noticed an A&K sp3000 sat right next to me, so I started some A/B testing with my ibasso. I've no idea what mode or set up the A&K was in, but I certainly didn't prefer it to my ibasso. I also wasn't keen on the form factor and ergonomics. I think this might say more about me and familiarity with something I really enjoy, rather than the relative merits of the A&K and DCS Lina.
I was very keen to try the Liric 2 when it became free. I instantly disliked the Liric last year, mainly because it kept wanting to fall off my head and because I found the tuning not to my taste at all. Sadly, I had pretty much the same result with the Liric 2.
I skipped the Empy2 here as I'd already had a brief listen to it hooked up to a Chord Dave on the Chord stand. I liked this very much, but didn't spend much time with it, for various reasons.
I then spotted something looking very similar to the 109 pro I bought last year, and was told it was the new 105 AER. I was keen to give it a listen, but was too slow to grab it, so missed out and settled for some iem listening instead.
I started with the Alba and was really disappointed. I think I must have had a very poor seal ( I'm not the best with iems) as bass was almost non existent. The same happened on the Advar, so I'm in fact convinced I must of had the wrong size ear tips and didn't get a seal, especially as form factor and shell size felt lovely and lightweight. Next year I'll hopefully come back to those with more time, and also try the 105 AER too, as Liric aside, I'm a big Meze fan.
I'll put up a part 2 at some point, hopefully.
