Alright, I'm back from dinner at Kajiken near Bryant Park. On to part 2 of my Day 1 impressions (this post took a while to write).
Tanchjim Force:
I was passing by the booth when the lady there waved me in to try their IEMs. I told her I know nothing about IEMs, so she should pick one for me. She gave me the Force, which is a preproduction model scheduled for release around May. After spending 3 kinda embarrassing minutes putting them in my ears the right way (though I figured it out on my own!), I plugged them into the 4.4mm jack on my Walkman ZX-707 (uncapped) and started listening.
First off, they're surprisingly insensitive. My MDR-Z1R requires 22/120 volume steps but the Force required 30 to reach the same realm of listening level. Sound-wise, they're quite spacious, which was a pleasant surprise. I've often heard that IEMs don't stage as well as over-ear headphones, but the Force has similar spaciousness to many headphones in terms of soundstage size. Furthermore, I think there's a psychological effect here too because I'm getting similar soundstage size as over-ear headphones but without the physical sensation of a headphone's earpads on my face, so it sounds more spacious from that too, like sounds are appearing from around me. Part of that sense of spaciousness may also come from the bass tuning, which is relatively reserved. There are plenty of headphones with more bass quantity than the Force and I'm sure many IEMs too. The bass has good texture, but I didn't get that much percussive impact or slam from drums. That may relate to how IEMs vs headphones interact (or don't interact) with the body.
However, I still find wearing IEMs uncomfortable. I don't like the sensation of having my ears plugged up, and I don't like the occlusion effect that makes me hear the lovely sounds of my own swallowing. I'm still just not an IEMs guy. However, the Force helped me understand what was possible with an IEM, particularly in terms of spaciousness, and I appreciate that. The placard on the table said that the Force would be between $200 and $299 at launch.
Audio Technica ATH-AWKT:
This is the classic Audio Technica closed-back sound. I have the AWAS and I demoed the AWAS at the AT booth today to re-establish my reference point. Vs the AWAS, the AWKT rebalances the mids to have more upper and less lower mids. This results in a brighter, thinner, somewhat "sing-song" vocal range that still avoids being scratchy or raspy. In contrast, the AWAS is richer in the midrange and basically follows Harman between 500 Hz and 2 KHz but with a cut in the presence region between 3-7K to avoid sibilance. The AWKT sounds like it has a flatter bass response with less of a mid-bass hump but slightly more bass extension into the sub-bass, though overall the bass seems reduced in quantity. In general, AWKT is brighter with AT-style "sweet" midrange while the AWAS has a warmer tone with a richer midrange. The AWKT tuning is a bit strange coming into it, but it grew on me quickly.
Audio Technica ATH-AWKG (with ZMF earpads, at the AT booth):
The AWKG was an odd one, because it had much more bass and significantly less treble than the AWAS or AWKT. It borderlined on dark even. Prominent, thumping bass with a rich midrange that was slightly lacking in "bite" to sibilants, and a withdrawn treble defined the sound to me. I thought it was very strange that AT would go on this path, but then I remembered that the AWKG comes with both stock and ZMF earpads. Both of the AWKGs I saw today, at the AT booth and in the Bloom Audio room, had the ZMF pads on. I'm told they're preferred by most listeners. I must be the odd one out, because I want to hear the stock pads. I thought the AWKG with ZMF pads was a bit too dark and bass-emphasized for my tastes.
I want an Audio Technica dammit! I've been considering the AWKG as an upgrade to my AWAS, if they're still being made a few years down the line, but without hearing the stock pads, I find the AWKG/ZMF to be too different from the usual AT sound to really fit as an upgrade to the AWAS.
Personally, I like the AWAS the most in terms of physical design. The cherry red looks nice to me (at least the real units do, not whatever tomato red the promo photos show) and I prefer the stained wood on the AS vs the plain black persimmon wood patterns on the KG. In terms of fit, they're basically the same, which means that they're both not that great. The limit swivel on the earcups in the up/down direction means that it's difficult to properly get a seal on the pads, and another person who was trying to demo the AWKT said that he just couldn't get a seal behind the ears. And the dual headband arcs are difficult to position properly on my head for even pressure distribution. Oddly enough, this distribution problem isn't a problem on the ADX5000 or ADX3000 which also use dual arcs, though those are covered in Alcantara rather than leather/pleather.
T+A Solitaire P on the HA200:
The Solitaire P (and the cheaper P-SE which I was able to demo side-by-side) were both comfortable headphones with a surprising degree of outside sound attenuation despite being open-backs. The thing that stood out to me on the P was the sense of punch on percussion notes. Maybe the isolation helped with that. But beyond that, I'm not quite sure what warrants the P's $6000+ price tag. For that money, I'd rather take the X9000 or Susvara. My demo was also limited in that the music had to be selected from laptops that were pre-loaded with music. And I didn't control the laptops directly, I had to request songs to be played. Not the most user-friendly show setup IMO.
Meze Empyrean 2 on SPL Phonitor XE (I think):
This was at Matrix Audio's table where they were really showing off their network transports. Unfortunately, song choice was limited. The Empyrean 2 inspires the same reaction that I had when I first listened to it at CAF 2023: nothing much. The bass was more prominent than I remembered from my impressions over a year ago, but they still didn't have much kick or snappiness. I recall back at CAF that I found the SR-X9000 to have better percussion than the Empy 2 because the X9K had a crisp leading edge to each drum hit while the Empy 2 was soft in comparison. The new Empyrean fails to really elicit anything in terms of sound impressions other than a bass-tilted, somewhat pleasantly smooth midrange/treble, but with a few peaks here and there, though not as many as I recalled from CAF. It simply doesn't compel me to listen more, and that's what I'm truly looking for in gear. This will come across as harsh, but with the Empyrean 2, I think Meze sacrificed some of the character of the OG Empyrean to achieve greater neutrality, and in doing so, achieved mediocrity.
Final Audio D8000 DC:
I listened to the D8000 Pro and D8000 DC Pro in Tokyo, but I didn't have the time to check out the D8000 DC then. I rectified this issue today. I think the DC Pro is better. The D8000 DC is noticeably warm in overall tonal balance, but it doesn't have as much punch as the DC Pro, and it has a number of harsh treble peaks as well. Warm-bright is a weird combination that's tricky to pull off, and I don't think the D8K DC manages that. Adam at Final Audio said that the people who prefer the warm tuning of the D8000 DC are usually those who don't listen to treble-intensive music in the first place while much of my music is treble-heavy EDM, so I'm simply not in the target audience. The Pro version has a more advanced damping system (IIRC) which produces the different tuning with more, but better controlled, treble. I may revisit the DC Pro tomorrow.
Hifiman Mini Shangri-La (with its matching amp):
The entry-level Hifiman estat, after the retirement of the Jade 2, I've read a number of positive reviews on its sound. It sounds... like a Hifiman, though it seems to have slightly thicker vocals vs the SGL Jr. It's also quite light and comfortable even with the v4 headband which is widely regarded as inferior to the v2 (e.g. Arya/HEK/Susvara) headband. This is another case where I don't trust Hifiman's estat amps or DACs to properly show off their headphones. Thicker vocals with a sizzly and piercing treble is a recipe for disaster to me, and I could hear a bit of that on the Mini-Shang at times, but the treble issues might just be the amp! I've read users of the Mini-Shang say that it improves greatly with a non-Hifiman amp, so I can't say much more about the Mini-Shang until I hear it elsewhere. I may revisit this headphone tomorrow though as I didn't spend much time on it.
Stax SR-X1 (with SRM-270S amp):
The X1 is good. Even though it's the entry level Stax, I think it has some very nice sound qualities. I think it's much like a mini-X9000, but with a bigger mid/upper bass hump, slightly more forward and scratchier vocals, slightly less upper treble air, and a smaller soundstage. The bass hump is kind of like the L700mk2 and it has decent bass overall. It doesn't have the same sub-bass extension as the X9000, but since most of what we hear in bass is really mid-bass from like 60-120 Hz, I hear more body to drums and bass synths on the X1 than on the X9000. That bass hump does mask some bass texture though, so bass notes can be a bit homogeneous in the texture of the trailing ends and decay of those notes, like everything is just "boom boom boom". Vocals sound rougher to me on the X1, and the treble is a little peakier and less even vs the X9000's airier treble. However, if you thought the X9000 was too wide in soundstage, like it spaced everything out too much, then the X1 might be preferable because it doesn't have that issue of too much separation. Another attendee thought that the X1 sounded like a mini-007mk2.9, which might be true since I thought the 007 had a rougher midrange, peakier treble, and thumpier bass vs X9000 when I heard them side by side at CAF one year.
At $1000 for the X1 and the SRM-270S with warranty, I think this is very good value in the world of estats. It's not too expensive, it doesn't look stupid, it's light, and some people with large ears may have issues with the small earcups, but I thought it was pretty comfortable on the head. Probably the best way to enter estats at the moment. And for me, I'd take the X1 over any of the Abyss Diana headphones as I found them to have broadly similar sound presentations.
Ray Samuels Emmeline B-21 Raider (with SR-X9000):
Since Abyss brought the B-21 Raider combo dynamic + estat amp and Stax was in the same room, another attendee (
@eskamobob1) got permission from Douglas Ip at Stax to bring the X9000 to the B-21. He then offered me the opportunity to listen as well. The B-21 is bassy. That was my main takeaway from listening was that bass was more present on the B-21 than on either the T8000 or the BHSE. I wouldn't consider it punchier or more dynamic than on a BHSE, but the bass was tonally more prominent which is usually a good thing for electrostatics. I can't say much about spatial qualities as the X9000 has certain spatial qualities regardless of amplification and this was late in the show when I was likely getting listening fatigue anyways, but the B-21 didn't harm those qualities at least.
eskamobob1 also got permission from a staff member at Hifiman to bring the SGL Sr over to the B-21 tomorrow for a listen. I'm excited to hear that, because as I mentioned earlier, I think the Hifiman amp is a
very poor fit for the Shangri-Las and I want to hear it on a different amp.
Viva amps:
Viva amps are luxury-tier gear items, but I don't find them particularly attractive in design and they don't really elevate headphones connected to them either. I listened to the Viva STX electrostatic amp in the Raal room with the Stax SR-L500mk2 and the 007mk2 and first, I'm not familiar with those models, but they also didn't sound spectacularly better or even different from when I've demoed those headphones in the past. I demoed the ADX3000 and the Noire X on the Viva headphone amp (the 845?) and wasn't smitten by it either. On the Noire X, it seemed like the midrange was a bit coarser-sounding on the Viva than the Topping DX9, but the difference wasn't that large. I'll want to hear the ADX3000 again at the AT booth to see if I like it better there. I know some people like them, and one guy thought the X9000 sounded best on the STX, but I'm not convinced of their worth, at least for me.
I feel like I'm being too negative. And I don't want to give the impression that I didn't enjoy my time today; I did enjoy listening to these things very much! And few things were actually bad here. Many things just aren't for me, or they aren't compelling enough to me to warrant more attention, but for me, whose headphone collection has reached a sort of semi-stable state, I'm more interested in discovering the character of a headphone, both good and bad, and understanding what might draw someone to that sound signature. Those qualities might not be ones I personally desire, but I try to understand them. I've ragged a bunch on the Empyrean 2, which I consider milquetoast, but for someone who wants a reasonably neutral, smooth, and bassy headphone with a light seasoning of Meze sound, then the Empyrean 2 fits that bill perfectly, just beware of a few treble peaks.
