whirlwind
Headphoneus Supremus
Canjam NYC 2023 show notes:
It has been about a week since the event itself, and I didn't take any actual notes during it. In fact, audio listening really wasn't something I planned to do at all this event — I was more interested in speaking to people that I'd known online for years but never met in person, as well as going to pleasant dinners. As it turns out, however, listening to audio equipment does eventually worm its way into one's audio show schedule, so out of pragmatism and to test out something new, I'm going to write short, impromptu notes on everything I can remember hearing. The length of each note will vary based on how much I have to say about a given product, but this shouldn't be indicative of quality, or interest, or lack thereof.
Nightjar/Subtonic Audio — various IEMs:
This was all done pretty informally, so I can't really comment too clearly on what's what. I listened to some single DD referred to as the Boner (I wish I was making this up) and a double DD referred to as the Duality or something like that, and somewhere in the mix there might have been something called the Singularity (or maybe that's the official name for the Boner? Not sure). To put it shortly — they're not for me. Very bassy, and quite dull and grainy as well. The kind of person this is meant to cater to likely doesn't need much more than bass, so I can't really say it's outright bad either. It clearly got a positive reception and I was one of the only people who disliked it, so I'll just leave it at that. As for the Storm, I've heard it extensively before, so I won't cover it here. Individual review forthcoming.
Sennheiser HD660S2:
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Or, not really, since the last time Sennheiser made a good headphone was what, 20 years ago? Anyways, the 660S2 is about what you'd expect; not as bad as the original 660S, but also not really particularly great or interesting, and certainly no better than even modern HD600s and HD650s, which in my opinion really aren't very good either. It reminds me of a very unflattering description of the HD580 that a friend of mine once came up with (one that I could not disagree with more, for what it's worth):
"Unfortunately they are just boring, and any time I listened to one I desperately wished it was a HD600 or HD650 again. This is because Sennheiser deliberately tuned the HD600 and HD650 to have a sound character of their own, something that makes them stand out and contrast with each other as well as other headphones in the market. The HD600 has a way of beautifying upper harmonics and was clearly devised with larger scale symphonic music in mind. The HD650 is the opposite, dampening upper harmonics for a focus on fundamentals and tilting taste towards popular and vocal music. The HD580 has neither of these characteristics."
Combine that with just a general dullness and lack of liveliness, a somewhat rolled top end, and marginally better bass extension, and you have the HD660S2. A whole lot of nothing. I'd be tempted to say that Sennheiser have lost their way without Axel Grell, but it's not like the forefather of modern headphones himself fared any better...
Axel Grell Drop Prototype:
I have to be completely honest here: it's just bad. Or rather, these things, given there were multiple prototypes at the show. I only heard 2 of supposedly 3, labeled 1 and 5. One was undampened, and the other had a big piece of felt covering the driver. Respectively, they sounded like a phone speaker and a phone speaker with a thumb covering it. Shouty, honky and particularly grainy in the treble. I'm not sure who this is meant to appeal to, but Axel Grell's late obsession with chasing soundstage (starting with the HD700/800) and its consequences have been a disaster for the headphone zeitgeist.
Campfire Audio — various IEMs:
There is no way to put this nicely: these IEMs range from among the worst I've ever heard to merely mildly offensive. Starting with the latter is the latest Solaris, whatever it's called. The only saving grace of this IEM is that it's not as bad as the Solaris 2020. Beyond that, it's a grainy, colored mess; not dissimilar to the original Solaris from all those years back, but more disjointed and confused than ever. After that is the Andromeda Emerald Sea (?). It's just bad bass lumped on top of bad bass. But perhaps none of it is nearly as bad as the Trifecta, which sounds like even worse bass with a razor sharp treble peak and no real mids to speak of, and is probably the worst IEM I've heard since the oBravo Ra-c-cu. Nicely Done.
Ucotech RE2:
This is an IEM brand I have quite literally never heard of before in my life. As far as I can tell, they're a Korean brand that mostly makes budget portable audio, and for the vast majority of their lifespan they seem to have been earbud specialists until as of late. The only reason I paid any attention at all to this is because the guys at the Bloom Audio booth were desperately trying to find something to wipe the look of utter disgust off my face from having just heard the latest Campfire offerings, and upon hearing it was a single DD, I said sure, why not. Boy am I glad I did. I went into this thing with no expectations at all and was very pleasantly surprised with an extremely honest, relatively correct sounding IEM with no gimmicks or strings attached. No unnatural bass boosts, no shrieking upper mids, no excessive dampening, no EST tweeters, no planar nonsense, just pure, honest music. I cannot even remember the last time I heard an IEM with so few frills.
That's not to say the RE2 is totally flawless, not at all. The treble is a bit rough, as one might expect from an undampened single DD, and it is beryllium coated, so it can be slightly metallic and maybe even a hair grainy at times. And certainly, it's not going to appeal to all crowds. The typical "audiophile" looking for nuclear bass or airy treble or a massive soundstage would do better to go elsewhere. But to someone looking for music, and nothing but music, I would recommend giving this a try. Expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised, as I was. And just for full disclosure, I did end up buying a pair. As for the rest of the Ucotech lineup, I can't endorse it. The RE1 just sounded distant and bassy, and I didn't bother listening to their multi BA, though a friend of mine who did didn't have anything good to say about it.
Utopia 2022:
I owned an original Utopia for a while, and for that brief period of time it was my favorite headphone, until I decided that it was too unnatural and metallic sounding. The Utopia 2022, had it been what I owned all those years ago, may not have been as blatantly colored as the original, but I doubt I would have found much reason to love it in the first place either. Sure, it's less metallic, but it's also a lot less lively and arguably has none of the special sauce that made the OG so memorable. It's very unfortunate that the only solution Focal could come up with to fix their flagship headphone's biggest criticism was to neuter it like stray mutt and throw a handy 25% pricetag increase on an already ludicrously expensive headphone, but that's high end audio for you.
Glenn OTL with the Lundahls (yuck) and EL3N tubes:
Shockingly, the best amp in the entire show. I suspect the pentodes cancel out the inherent tone suckage and deadness one might expect from Lundulls with some warmth and liveliness. They did a fantastic job at waking up 300 ohm headphones and making them sound as they should, and, believe it or not, they sounded musical even with something as inherently unmusical and sterile as the Chord Dave feeding it. Not the best amp I've ever heard, but far from the worst, and really respectable all things considered.
Stax SR-X9000:
A friend on Discord had been pestering me for months to listen to this headphone, being a personal acquisition of his. Given the amount of egging and pushing that was put upon me to finally hear this headphone, I was pretty unimpressed — they really live up to the stereotype of electrostatics sounding like plastic, particularly with brass, and they're apparently incapable of playing anything other than mezzo-forte and forte at all times. I suppose I shouldn't have expected any less given the SR-009 and SR-009S infamously being thin, wiry, plastic haze machines. As a saving grace though, they did make the L700 MK2 sitting next to them sound positively angelic in comparison. You know, those weren't half bad for an electrostat. Maybe with a decent amp.... nah, nevermind.
Hifiman Svanar:
I spent more time fiddling with tips on this damn thing than I did actually listening to it. It just sounds wrong, plain and simple.
T10 Bespoke Ear Micro:
Three words: Delusions of grandeur. This is a completely useless luxury product that no one asked for, designed for boomers who didn't get taxed enough prior to retirement and crypto millionaires looking to show off what happens when poor people win the lottery. To actually describe what this thing is supposed to be, it's essentially a very tiny TWS IEM with a bunch of strange quality of life features tacked on. The actual audio experience itself is total garbage; it's a bassy, veiled turd that sounds underwater, though perhaps it's not quite as horrific as the Trifecta. That alone doesn't really explain away the $3000 starting price that's capable of going up as high as the customer pleases. Rather, what is supposed to justify it is the technology; the weird touch sensors that necessitate wearing the IEM horizontally rather than at an angle as is natural for the human ear, the parametric EQ presets that are billed to memorize EQ per track... that's all I can remember from the brief I was given, and their site isn't exactly particularly transparent about what on earth you're buying their product for either, other than as... ah, glorified jewelry. Pages and pages of pictures of (hideous) customized cases and nothing but talk of customization options. Even for actual products like clothes and shoes and jewelry that pride themselves on aesthetics and nothing more, I'd be aghast to have all these unending pages of options shoved in my face. Why even pretend to be a luxury product if you can't show any semblance of restraint or savoir-faire?
The T10 Bespoke booth at Canjam NYC had an incredibly entertaining unattributed quote that I wish I copied down, essentially comparing their product to luxury cars or watches. The very fundamental issue with this comparison is that when you pay for a Patek Phillipe watch, you are getting both a piece of jewelry that is fundamentally beautiful and tasteful (usually, at least), as well as a piece of mechanical art that performs extremely well at its functional aspects (timekeeping) should you choose to use them. This is not the case for an IEM, where they serve first and foremost as a functional piece of electronics. On that account, T10 Bespoke fails miserably. On the account of being aesthetically beautiful, which is really in third or fourth place of importance for an IEM, T10 Bespoke also fails miserably. The actual IEMs themselves are literally nothing special to look at considering how small they are, and the case they come in is massive and incredibly gaudy, or at least the taste of their customers is. That should tell you everything you need to know about this piece of junk. If you don't believe me, just wait and see how long this brand lasts when the next economic recession inevitably comes along. I have the itchiest feeling that it won't be very long.
Zähl HM1:
It's a solid state amp and it sounds like one. The only thing really exceptional about it is the Veblen goods marketing strategy, to which I have to say I'm surprised no one in audio has done it sooner. Between this and something like the Niimbus US 5, you'd have better luck comparing flavors of bottled water.
Audio Technica ATH-W2022:
I'll be honest: I've never liked Audio Technica headphones. The R70x, so often touted as a HD580/600/650 killer, is completely and utterly lifeless and dull with a particularly nauseating grain, and the ADX5000 is just so intensely bright and metallic that I find it outright difficult to listen to. So imagine being me, having been told by the owner of these headphones that I would probably dislike them, when I actually sat down and realized... they're not bad at all. Yes, they're quite colored, with a fair bit of bass, but they don't do anything inherently wrong. The coloration is, all things considered, very tasteful, which is really something that cannot be said very often for any piece of given equipment, much less a closedback headphone. And you know what, they're pretty lively for a closedback headphone too, so I can't even accuse them of being unmusical or anything like that. Color (heh) me impressed.
Now, is it worth $9000? Probably not, unless your net worth makes $9000 look like $900. A big part of the pricetag is the wonderful fit and finish and the beautiful urushi lacquer (I don't actually know if they're urushi but I'm going to assume they are because they're Japanese and have metallic colors) on the cups. But hey, I'm not here to make judgement calls on price. I just think they sound pretty damn decent.
Eksonic T2 "Kerry":
Heard this one with the SR-007 MK1 available at the same table, but unfortunately the amp itself seemed to be busted in the right channel (crackling past a certain volume). The builder himself seemed very apologetic and gracious about it though. As far as I could tell in such an suboptimal situation, it was kind of polite sounding overall and not very exciting, but who knows how much of that is just the amp being fried or maybe even the headphone. The SR-007 has never been a very lively headphone, after all.
Spirit Torino — various headphones:
There were maybe 5 or 6 headphones I tried at this table, and all of them were astoundingly bad. Worst one was probably their latest planar offering — definitely one of the thinnest and brightest headphones at the whole show. Their 5 figure halo headphones weren't nearly as atrocious, but they were still pretty terrible. Very bassy and quite grainy. Most entertaining was probably their weird $12000 headphone amp that looked more like a gaming PC or an Xbox 360. Definitely one of the worst tables at the whole show alongside the T10 Bespoke nonsense.
RAAL-requisite CA1a:
Tried this with both pads, and it's a total disaster for the same reasons as the original SR1a — a shouty, grainy, painful to listen to mess. Very little to add beyond that.
Dan Clark Audio Corina:
It's not as bad as the Voce, I guess. Also, funny name with bizarre stylization. Why is the RI in red??? That's all I have to say about it.
Abyss Diana and Diana Closed (?) prototype:
Though Abyss were mainly peddling their rainbow colored Diana collection, of more interest to me was the closedback Diana prototype that seemed oddly reminiscent of Apple's Airpods Max. Anyways, cut to the chase — it's ear piercingly bright and obscenely hard to drive. Abyss brought their own XI Audio amps and I had the knob maxed out and still couldn't achieve a satisfactory volume, and that amp is actually designed to drive planars. Not sure who asked for this given the absurd inefficiency, but it's really bad. The Diana they had on show was surprisingly okay though, for a planar. Certainly better than the Diana I heard years ago. Maybe worth revisiting, though I personally doubt they'd be terribly musical even with everything swung in their favor.
Sennheiser HE-1:
I listened to this headphone extensively years ago at the outset of my audiophile journey. At the time I was an electrostatic fanatic looking to compare it with the various Stax headphones I was obsessed with. Even back then, I found it rather dull — I managed to independently come to the conclusion that it was incredibly dynamically compressed even without having an understanding of the concept of dynamics, and I found nothing exceptional about its resolving ability or tuning or what have you. It is now 5 years later and I am proud to report that virtually nothing has changed in my impressions. Best reserved as furniture for bourgeoisie families in independent Korean films.
Conclusion:
In summary, nothing I really heard at Canjam NYC was particularly exceptional. The show highlight for me was probably, believe it or not, the previously unknown Ucotech IEM. Beyond that, I think the most fun I had was from going to meals with people and talking about virtually everything and anything with all the different personalities I've known online for quite a while now, but never actually met in person. And I've really come to the conclusion in the last 2 major audio shows I've gone to post-pandemic that this is what endgame audio really is like; the audio itself stops being a focal point of the experience and instead becomes a conversation piece. Simply listening to things is really not all that fun, but the social experience that comes with hearing it with others is what it's ultimately all about. And to that end, I have to say Canjam NYC was a resounding success.
See you at Canjam SG if I see you.
This is the best thing I have read on head-fi in quite a while.
Thanks, it made my side hurt from laughing!
