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Part 4 of 4
^ those birds were beautifully-colored when they fly
On the final day, Sunday, I mostly just got around to doing other things I had meant to do on Saturday.
I stopped by the AMR/iFi Audio booth in the outer corridor of CanJam to say hello to the folks there. I spent a lot of time catching up with @Cotnijoe there. Fun fact, if you didn't know already, AMR is the parent company of iFi Audio, and a lot of the technology in iFi products are trickled down from AMR.
This DAC was on display at the AMR area of the booth. It's supposed to look like a Ferarri and reminded me a lot of the Light Harmonic Da Vinci DAC.
^ Of course, they were also displaying their Pro-series of equipment, which includes the Pro iDSD, Pro iCan, and Pro iESL energizer.
If you watched the Ask Me Anything video in the previous post, you would have seen Thorsten from AMR/iFi as one of the panelists. He was at the AMR/iFi booth today and I got a chance to talk with him. He's super fun to talk to if you ever get the opportunity. We talked about some of the engineering aspects of the iFi products and why they're designed the way they are. He even pulled out a Marriott notepad and started drawing circuit diagrams on it to help explain things. Seriously!
After all of that, I didn't actually get a chance to listen to any of the gear at their table. Time was running short for the day.
I also attended the CanJam seminar on Sunday afternoon, which, like the Ask Me Anything seminar, had a nice variety of panelists in the in-ear earphone industry.
They didn't quite answer the questions directly, so that was a bit disappointing. It was an interesting seminar nonetheless. I personally haven't seen representatives from Westone, Ultimate Ears, and Shure all in the same room before.
After the seminar, I went back to the main CanJam ballroom area and I wanted to check some things off of my "to listen" list.
I stopped by the InEar booth to try their Prophile 8 and Stage Diver 5 in-ears. Holy cow was I blown away by the Prophile 8's sound! If you're familiar with the Ultimate Ears Reference Remastered, it sounds a bit like that with a slightly boosted sub-bass and a treble that's not as rolled-off sounding. With the additional options to boost the bass, treble, or both, this makes it a much more versatile in-ear to customize your sound on-the-go. I tried both the bass and treble switches on and I think that particular sound profile would be great for listening to if you're in a noisy environment like the train or busy city.
It is also very interesting that they offer two shell sizes for people: small and standard. Usually in-ear earphones with multiple drivers tend to be too big to fit comfortably in my ear, but the small variant fit really nicely. Additionally, both sizes of the shells are formed into triangular-shaped wedges, which makes gripping it extremely ergonomic when putting them in or out of your ear. Also, these particular in-ears are 3D-printed and finished with a matte-black finish, which is even cooler! Two thumbs up from me.
I also tried their StageDiver 5, and it was still quite good. It didn't quite have the same detail and instrument separation as the ProPhile 8, but that's to be expected. It sounded more V-shaped to me in comparison, more than the ProPhile 8 with the bass and treble switches on. One of the InEar representatives showed me the different types of wood enclosures you can get with the StageDiver 5. The ebony wood one was simply stunning!
I stopped by the Swan Song Audio booth to say hello to the representative there. I attended one of his talks last year at the "speaker tower" where he described how the big Swan Song Audio speakers worked with their vacuum tube power amplifier. I gave their White Swan DAC/amp system a try and it sounded okay to me. I'm not too familiar with the LCD-XC, so I didn't get a good baseline for how the DAC/amp sounds. The White Swan is basically a box that you can request to be customized, which is a novel concept. Want it to have XLR headphone outputs? You got it. Want it to have line-out outputs? No problem. Do you want it to have USB inputs? Sure. Do you want RCA line-out options? Will do!
^ at last year's talk
Next was Periodic Audio. I know a lot of people swear by the beryllium drivers. I honestly liked the magnesium drivers more. To me, the beryllium driver one had too much of a mid-bass hump that crept into the midrange, making it sound too thick and recessed. On the other end of the mids, the upper-mids sounded too shouty to me.
In contrast, the magnesium drivers had more bass quantity, but it sounded more like an elevated sub-bass to me, so the quantity didn't bother me so much. The midrange as a whole was good minus the upper-midrange/lower-treble area, which sounded sizzley to me. This didn't bother me as much as the shouty midrange of the beryllium drivers though since I know I can easily EQ that peak out.
It was near the end of the event by this time, so I rushed over to the Sony table nearby to give their in-ears a listen. Typically Sony doesn't have a house sound that I like so I had low expectations for their IER-M9 in-ear. I was pleasantly surprised though. It reminded me a bit of the Periodic Audio magnesium without as much bass and without as much of a sparkley sound, more on the bright side. I don't mind a bright midrange as long as it doesn't sound sibilant, and the M9 didn't. Compared to the Periodic Audio magnesium though, the instrument separation was much better-defined and the overall soundstage sounded more spacious. Ironically enough, the M9 uses magnesium for their super-tweeter driver too. Maybe my ears just like the sound from magnesium drivers, hahaha. I wouldn't mind picking up one of these again.
I was guessing the next in-ear was their new flagship since they had a blow-up display of its internals: IER-Z1R. To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of it. It had better instrument separation than the M9 and an even bigger sense of space, a more balanced-sounding sound signature overall, but sibilant to me, which as stated above, I can't really tolerate. I guess my ears must be off from the average though since pretty much every other impression I've seen for the IER-Z1R has been overwhelmingly posititive. At $2.3k, I'd give this a hard pass and I'd much, much, much rather invest nearly half of that amount into a ProPhile 8.
The Sony table also featured their newest DAC/amp with a screen: DMP-Z1. It certainly looks beautiful with the milled aluminum chassis and the gigantic customized Alps RK90(?). I couldn't really evaluate its sound because 1) It was connected with the MDR-Z1R which I'm not too familiar with, 2) they had a very limited selection of music in MP3 format. If you're displaying flagship products with a freaking HI-RES TM sticker on it, why are you using MP3?!?!? That's like what my non-audiophile friends would say as a joke: how's it sound with my MP3 music? Ugh...
At this point, the show was wrapping up and people were starting to pack up. I quickly went to the Benchmark booth to give their system (DAC3 and HPA4 amp) a try. I listened to it with my Clear and compared them with the Utopia. This was the first time I actually really enjoyed listening to the Utopia. That system made my Clears sound like mud, it was that eye-opening. I originally bought the Clear because I liked how it sounded next to the Utopia on various amps and I always found the Utopia to sound too bright for my tastes. Hearing the Utopia on this system didn't give me any of those vibes. I'll have to give their system another listen during a future CanJam event.
After most of the exhibitors had packed up their booths, jude and other folks from Head-Fi sat down and just talked for a good 2 hours about our impressions of things, as well as measurements of gear and other technical aspects. It's a lot of fun hearing others talk about their impressions, as opposed to reading them on the forums.
jude has a pair of Theoretica Applied Physics BACCH-BM in-ear binaural microphones that he's generously going to lend me soon, so I'm really looking forward to using those for some test recordings.
Speaking of measurements, here are the measurements of my Mobius from the Audio Precision room*:
^ those are the different DSP options for the Mobius with the 3D head-tracking off (1/3 octave smoothing, raw)
^ those are the "Music" and "Flat" DSP options for the Mobius with the 3D head-tracking on, and centered when it was placed on the ear simulator (1/3 octave smoothing, raw)
^ left/right channel tracking
^ impulse response for "Music" DSP, 3D head-tracking off
^ impulse response for "Music" DSP, 3D head-tracking on
^ level and distortion for "Music" DSP, 3D head-tracking off; -65 dB = 0.056% THD
https://www.ap.com/technical-library/more-about-thdn-and-thd/
https://www.ap.com/technical-library/more-about-harmonic-distortion-product-results/
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-thd.htm
* Just as a reminder, these are not 100% accurate since these were measured in a noisy room with speakers playing at volume 11 across the hallway
Anyway, I had to leave that evening to head back to the airport, so I said goodbye to everyone and took off. Of the RMAF events I've been to, I think this was the best one to date. I had a ton of fun at this event just going around and talking to folks from Head-Fi. Until next time, I'll see you guys on Head-Fi!
Thank you for taking the time to peruse through my CanJam at RMAF experience!
This has a fraction of the likes it deserves... Simply amazing show recap @miceblue!!!!