[m8o]

Btw, did anyone who attended the Smyth demo not come away from the demo with their lower jaw on the carpet? Rugrash on the chin.

Astonishing! And a no brainer at the price. I WILL own one!

As I don't have a kick ass media setup in NYC where most my headphones live to produce a transfer function for my room, I was assured they have my name and the unit I buy will come pre-loaded with the transfer function developed in that killer 11.1 Dolby Atmos demo room for my exact ears.

What a time to be alive.

 

[Netforce]

Thanks everyone who stopped by the Questyle table! We had a wonderful time in New York! Grew up in New York and moved over the country to California when I was 14 so it is pretty special to me to be back home.

I wanted to not bring too many headphones this time but ended up filling out our table with headphones! And I still had a few more I didn't take out... Ran out of luggage space so I had the lcd-4 as my travel headphones from LA to NY!


We had our flagship gold stack system on the Focal table wired up with a ton of kimber and using the silver kimber axios to the utopia. Wished I had a chance to listen that wonderful real gold utopia with our gold stack...

We brought our two prototype CMA400i units, one was with Audeze and the other was at our table. Very popular with the iSine series running balanced with 2.5mm at the Audeze exhibit and a 4 pin XLR with us! 4 pin XLR cables for iems was a glorious sight to behold and I have fallen in love with the idea, might lop off my iem cables and attach XLR to them all.

The cma600i had quite a number of appearances around from Final to MrSpeakers to Meze to our table with our clear top to look inside! Wished I got some more pictures before the end of the show of all the 600i around! Hoped everyone enjoyed it, the new aeon was a very popular pairing for us, hoping to grab a pair when I get a chance.

The qp1r was around so much I don't recall every table which had one! And a number of folks who already own one and came by anyway with their unit! Heard lots of feedback which I truly love to hear as it does truly help to build a better dap!

Overall, I forgot how cold NYC was. Forgot about coat checks since they are so uncommon in LA lol. Watched and loved Avenue Q on Saturday night and did the bowling with everyone afterwards and had such a good time while watching the Super Bowl. Such a crazy game, glad I got to spend time with my great friends while watching it.

5 am now and nearly 6 am and I'm still writing this out since I had such a fun time this weekend. The body it tires but the mind doesn't stop. Saturday was so crazy busy I think I had 3 chances to actually sit down.

NY is done and there are just so many more Canjams along they way along with so many other audio events, this year already every other week has been a show for me. I love it so much that 2017 is going to be an awesome year for audio.

 

[eddiek997]

  I want to say thank you for everyone who made CanJam NYC possible.  It is truly a unique and remarkable experience that all audio lovers owe to themselves to be a part of.   What was so exceptional about it is that as you try out new products you may find yourself traveling through the audio journey all in one day!!!  It's so much easier than weaving through gambling purchases and trying to decipher reviews and trying to maneuver through the ignorance of the scale of what is truly out there.
 
And as you make your way through this journey that may have very well been unfinished and incomplete otherwise, you get to meet many of the enthusiasts and engineers who make this audio world what it is.  And the passion and love that they have for their work on display shows in the enthusiasm and emotion they have when they discuss them, creating an invaluable learning experience for any of the willing attendees who are bound to fall in love with something there.
 
And though many people would call this a hobby, I dare say, from what I have seen, Audio is an art of engineering that seems to strive towards the beauty of sound.  This not only validates why so many of us came to head-fi.org, but also verifies our love for this stuff.
 
It will be an injustice to the many of those I didn't have the time to afford, but I have to give a shout out to Campfire Audio and that Vega IEM of there's...  What a wonderful and beautiful piece of work.  I did not see that one coming.  Congratulations of that one.  You really did it.
 
-BOB

Wholeheartedly applaud and echo this statement. 
 
Thank you to the organizers, the Vendors and those with the passion to make this happen.

 

[blackwolf1006]

I had an amazing time at Can Jam NYC 2017. I had an opportunity to listen to the HE1. To my ears I think the STAX SR-09 connected to the blue Hawaii amp is better. I think I might need to listen to it again to get a better opinion.
 
The FiiO X5 3^rd gen might be the best player there at its price point. It sounds as good as the big boys on the block.
 
The Sony Z1R was the best closed headphone I heard at the show. I honestly thought they were open Based on the sound stage. The sony tech were nice enough to allow me to test the Z1R on my AK380+AKAMP. I was able to drive them comfortably with the.
 
The Focal Utopia was amazing. Its rare to find headphones that does everything well. With the right AMP they can be all you need.
 
HiFiMan Shangri-la was good. I wished I had a more quite room to listen to it in. The noise pollution definitely affected my listening experience.
 
I bumped into Andy Regan from Jerry Harvey Audio. He was listening to a prototype IEM. I asked him if its going to be the first 20 driver IEM. He said it will not be that many drive and that’s all I can say at this time. So look out for news from JH in the upcoming months.

 

[mark5hs]

The Pravda booth was intense

 

[kendavis]

I went with low expectations mostly because I already have a home system in place that I am happy with. I thought that it would be noisy and I thought that there was nothing that I really needed to listen to.
 
I was wrong. I had a great time. I met up and hung out with with some friends. I decided that I really do need a portable system along with my home system and ended up coming home with a Chord Mojo and an order for a pair of Mr Speakers Aeons (which sounded and fit better than I thought possible at that price point)
 
Thank you to the vendors and organizers. I hope that we, the audience, met your expectations (so you will want to do another one next year).

 

[PeteSTRADAMUS]

Thanks everyone who stopped by the Questyle table! We had a wonderful time in New York! Grew up in New York and moved over the country to California when I was 14 so it is pretty special to me to be back home.

I wanted to not bring too many headphones this time but ended up filling out our table with headphones! And I still had a few more I didn't take out... Ran out of luggage space so I had the lcd-4 as my travel headphones from LA to NY!


We had our flagship gold stack system on the Focal table wired up with a ton of kimber and using the silver kimber axios to the utopia. Wished I had a chance to listen that wonderful real gold utopia with our gold stack...

We brought our two prototype CMA400i units, one was with Audeze and the other was at our table. Very popular with the iSine series running balanced with 2.5mm at the Audeze exhibit and a 4 pin XLR with us! 4 pin XLR cables for iems was a glorious sight to behold and I have fallen in love with the idea, might lop off my iem cables and attach XLR to them all.

The cma600i had quite a number of appearances around from Final to MrSpeakers to Meze to our table with our clear top to look inside! Wished I got some more pictures before the end of the show of all the 600i around! Hoped everyone enjoyed it, the new aeon was a very popular pairing for us, hoping to grab a pair when I get a chance.

The qp1r was around so much I don't recall every table which had one! And a number of folks who already own one and came by anyway with their unit! Heard lots of feedback which I truly love to hear as it does truly help to build a better dap!

Overall, I forgot how cold NYC was. Forgot about coat checks since they are so uncommon in LA lol. Watched and loved Avenue Q on Saturday night and did the bowling with everyone afterwards and had such a good time while watching the Super Bowl. Such a crazy game, glad I got to spend time with my great friends while watching it.

5 am now and nearly 6 am and I'm still writing this out since I had such a fun time this weekend. The body it tires but the mind doesn't stop. Saturday was so crazy busy I think I had 3 chances to actually sit down.

NY is done and there are just so many more Canjams along they way along with so many other audio events, this year already every other week has been a show for me. I love it so much that 2017 is going to be an awesome year for audio.

Hi, it was you i was talking to at the Queststyle booth ? 

 

[PeteSTRADAMUS]

  I went with low expectations mostly because I already have a home system in place that I am happy with. I thought that it would be noisy and I thought that there was nothing that I really needed to listen to.
 
I was wrong. I had a great time. I met up and hung out with with some friends. I decided that I really do need a portable system along with my home system and ended up coming home with a Chord Mojo and an order for a pair of Mr Speakers Aeons (which sounded and fit better than I thought possible at that price point)
 
Thank you to the vendors and organizers. I hope that we, the audience, met your expectations (so you will want to do another one next year).

The Aeons we're awesome !!!! Biggest surprise of the show for me. Excluding all the heavyweights i loved. 

 

[doctorjazz]

Just found this thread, bit late, so here I go...

Had a great time, thanks SO MUCH to the organizers!
Great to hear so much fine gear.

It was great to meet the vendors, designers, and enthusiasts, and listen all that great stuff.

I suppose it could have been bigger...but I tried pretty hard to listen to the stuff that was on demo, 2 pretty full days of listening, didn't get to everything (and, I find after a while, I get into burn out mode, everything starts to sound the same anyway).

Had fun meeting some folks (shout out to Eddie!), didn't get to meet some of the local posters I thought I would, but I suppose sticking big cans over the ears is a somewhat isolating experience.

Enjoyed 1 seminar, on music production on Saturday, couldn't get to the others.

Great to meet Jude, hook up again with folks I'd met at earlier meets.

Wanted to go to the Bowl party (actually paid to go), but was so beat by 4PM Sunday, had to drag myself back to Jersey, I expect it was lots of fun (got to watch the Evil Empire-I'm a Jets Fan-pull off a ridiculously fantastic comeback victory from the comfort of home, though, and today IS a "school day").

Hopefully, CanJam will return to NYC next year!

 

[Lookout57]

  The FiiO X5 3^rd gen might be the best player there at its price point. It sounds as good as the big boys on the block.

 
To me the Opus#1 sounded better and has a much better UI/UX at the under $400 price point.

 

[ivanrocks321]

This was my first big meet and I had a blast! a few highlights, was meeting and getting the chance to get a few of my gear measured at Audio Precision. I had brought my Grado HP-1000, my Fitear TG-334 and Noble K-10UA to be measured on Sunday first thing after 10am to make sure I had a nice quite time to do it. Im going to attach the PDF reports for each here if anyone wants a look. But keep in mind the measurements were taken in a less than ideal environment. I also ran into Jude as well and he was wondering on how the HP-1000 measured. 
 
Smyth A-16
There were lots of great gear around and unfortunately I did not get a chance to try everything but I got try most things there. I think the single most impressive gear at CanJam was the Smyth A-16, that thing is a game changer! I was a little skeptical on how good it was but I knew the A-8 had great reviews so I was glad I was able to get a walk in at the end of the day on sunday as the last person before they started packing up. The A-16 demo got me hooked I will be getting one and have already decided to let go of my speaker rig for this A-16 with my existing headphone setup. To me worth every penny at MSRP of $2000 but an exceptional deal at the pre-order price currently and if you got in on the kickstarter price thats like getting away with stealing! If the Smyth bros are reading this thank you for coming you guys have saved me lots of cash on convincing me to not invest more into a sperate rig. 
 
IEMS
Other notable mentions include StrereoPravda with there SB-7 a lot of very interesting design choices here that for me lead to a not too uncomfortable but still took some time to get the fit correct. Once I had a good seal the sound was very very good and held there own against some of the bigger players at CanJam. To me it was very resolving a bit more on the treble side but not sharp or fatiguing yet sounding very lush and punchy. Im guessing the punchy sound was due to how deep they needed to be inserted into the ears. Its hard to believe how smooth it sounded as well and it turns out that no crossovers are used and instead done with resistors. The biggest issues for me was the ergonomics and comfort, they need to be put very deep into the ear canal, the cable is flexible but very thick and heavy for and IEM and especially for one with this kind of shape  makes it difficult to get the correct fit and maintain it if you are moving about. The Campfire Andro was amazing and much of what people said about it was true and a really great reference style tuning IEM at very competitive price. Noble had some excellent stuff as well I brought my K10UA with me to compare with the encore and katana, and I found the encore to be some kind of halfway point to the original K10 and the katana but closer to the K-10. I see the Encore as more of a side step to the K10 although the encore was technically capable it was not as much as I expected and the that added improvement needs to be balanced with personal sound preference. The Katana were excellent and I found it had that intended reference style tuning but the best part is it still manage to retain a good amount of musicality that I enjoyed from the K10. 
 
New Prototype stuff
I really liked Periodic audio's stuff especially there Beryllium driver IEM and its nice to see more competitive priced dynamic iems that are coming into the market. Had a talk with the folks at periodic audio and it turns out even though they are new they are not new to the industry so that's good to know.
 
Sonoma had their interesting electrostatic headphone there, I don't really like to make any detailed statements for open-backed headphone is noise conditions like this but I can say these are very well made and from talking to the folks there the diaphragm should be more robust and resistance to moisture and dust compared to conventional electrostats. I kind of wished they had designed the headphone to be able to work with other electrostatic amps but unfortunately you dont get that option. It would have been nice to be able to buy the system separately and potentially reach a wider span of people who are already invested into a electrostat amp or simply don't have the funds to drop on a complete sonoma system yet but want to get into stat headphones other than what's available in the market now.
 
I was really looking forward to demoing the Chord poly and the Mytek clef but unfortunately they did not have a working prototype at the time.
 
Things I wanted to try but ran out of time 
- Chord Hugo 2
- Audeze iSine Series 
- Unique Melody planar iem prototype

 

[meringo]

Campfire Audio was the stand out for me. Their team was helpful and humble and almost caused me to walk out with a Lyra II. I'll be saving up for a set of these real soon.
 
Another standout, to me, was Periodic audio. The beryllium model was incredible! 

 

[Ike1985]

After reading Tyll's article my mind is blown.  Seems the next 5 years is going to be very interesting.  He mentions that recordings will have to be done differently for interaction with these new "spatial/3d audio" technologies.  Hope to hell they'll be some sort of standard formula for converting conventional stereo recordings to the new format, for example it detects the instruments and places them in default positions on the stage in order to recreate that tru3 3d HRTF effect.  I've got a massive metal library and would be cool to be able to convert it to the new format.  The Smyth A-16 sounds incredible and is very competitively prices it would seem to me given what it does.  Would like to hear some more reviews of it if possible.  The HE-1 and Shangri-La look incredible. 

 

[Lookout57]

  Campfire Audio was the stand out for me. Their team was helpful and humble and almost caused me to walk out with a Lyra II. I'll be saving up for a set of these real soon.
 
Another standout, to me, was Periodic audio. The beryllium model was incredible! 

Up until I saw the post in this thread about the Vega's I knew nothing about CFA or ALO. Up until 2 years ago I've been mainly a high end stereo guy and just started getting into hi-res portable listening.
 
I agree the CFA team was extremely helpful and humble. I didn't know at the time that I was talking to Ken Ball the creator of these amazing IEMs as he was so unassuming and genuine. It was interesting that he wanted my opinion on what I thought of the Vega and Andromeda and the differences in their sound.
 
But after talking with him and listening to the Vega's, I'll be adding a pair to replace my Westone W50 which I wasn't planning on doing.

 

[Kerwin515]

This was my first CanJam and I really enjoyed myself.  I convinced two of my non audiophile buddies to join me and they happen to like it too.  One of them commented on how playing music on his phone sounds like crap without the Audeze iSine 20 with the cipher cable.
 
Highlights/Impressions for me:

1. Audeze: I tried both the iSine 10 and 20.  The iSine 20 is the clear winner.  Despite it being open, it did block out quite a bit of noise from the showroom floor. Also tried the HTC Vive with iSine 20.  I lot of fun and they were very immersive.  LCD-4 was as good as I imagined.  It was the first time I've listened to an open back headphone.  That being said, I definitely can't get a pair with my current listening situation at home.
2. Noble: Listened to the 9-driver Katana.  To my ears sounded like a full-size closed back headphone.  Really fantastic.  I understand why people back to get custom molded ones though.  I had to really hold them in place in my ears because the available tips didn't fit quite right.  Still impressive nonetheless!
3. Schiit: Got to listen to music with the Jotunheim (with DAC) connected to a pair of Mr. Speakers ETHER C Flow.  Sounded great and would've been a worthy upgrade to my Apogee Groove and possible my end game DAC amp.  That is until:
4. Mytek: The Brooklyn.  Not as large as it looked in reviews.  The Brooklyn was connected to Sony's MDR Z1R.  Luckily the the computer it was connected to had a good assortment of music that I know very well in its Roon library. DAMN that sounded amazing! Very impressed at the details it brought out. Definitely going to save my pennies for one! Even my non audiophile friends that it sounded amazing and was worth the price.  That's enough of an endorsement for me!
5. Sennheiser:  Listened to the HD800S.  Definitely not a fan of the Sennheiser sound.  I also didn't like how the ear cups fit on my head.
6. Audioquest: I've been wanting to listen to the Nightowl Carbon for awhile.  From what I've read in the past, the Nighthawk/Nightowl sound is divisive.  I for one, didn't like it at all. That being said, they were very comfortable.
7. Sony: Very impressed with the fit and finish of the MDR-Z1R.  Sounds amazing too.  

 
Overall loved being around other like minded people and getting to interact with the manufacturers.  Next time there's a CanJam in NYC, I'll be there! Thank you to all who made it possible!