After this great pictorial report from Damon, I would contrast with these meager words describing my short time at the show yesterday
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Actually, I spent more than half my time at the Stax booth, first talking to Stax staff and checking out the new T8000 amp as discussed in this post
#32 of Jude's video unveiling. The rest of the time at the Stax booth was spent catching up with
@jude and Ethan, they remembered stories from >12 years ago when we traded amps, I felt both very old and ashamed to have forgotten most of this.
@jude has just an unbelievable memory and the same great enthusiasm as always, it was really nice to catch up with you, however short time this was
. Ethan, I forgot your handle name, hope you read this.
Also, at Stax booth (I did not mean to be glued there the whole time!!), I met with
@Currawong and
@Marshal Banana , again too brief unfortunately, but it was nice to see you both
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I continued my round and went to MrSpeaker's booth for a short listen to the Ether E prototype. The design seems to have evolved significantly with reinforced stators reminiscent of the SR009 and what seems like larger opening pads. They also sounded drastically different (from same BHSE and M1 source) from what I recall at previous show (1 year ago?) with a bit higher efficiency. From the brief listening they sounded warmer than previous iteration but overall a tad muted / dynamically restricted coming from SR-009/T8000 combo. Again, this was unfamiliar music, very short listen, not sure there's much to trust in there.
Now, the people handling the booth also distribute the Sonoma system so I could have a short listen. Against my (negative) pre-conception on this combo, it does not sound half bad. Felt the voicing was good (wish there was more variety in the source material to play though and I wonder these DSD recordings in there are very specific / good sounding masters vs. the CD version I use). Phones are light, only complaint would be the clamp of death, had to remove my glasses.
Last stop was at Hifiman booth, I could meet Fang for the first time and he seemed much much friendlier in person than what I imagined when reading his posts before on Head-fi or other videos online. I think I told him perhaps 6 or 7 times I felt the Susvara pricing was out of line, it should be 3k and replacing the HE-1000. I feel, perhaps the technology has evolved almost too quickly at Hifiman over the past 2 years and Fang is having a challenging when wanting to put to market new products that put the 6 month old shiny toys to shame...
I am saying all this because I was actually very impressed by what I heard from the Susvara. The voicing is really nice, extremely engaging with amazing kick, good presence / extension but no shrillness. It does not sound too restrained like I recall from the HE1000. So I just asked Fang to make this into a 1kHz entry level hifiman and all will be happy
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Fang mentioned about large improvements in the magnet construction, in particular shaping the magnets to avoid sharp edges. I personally felt that the pads were very well executed and the voicing must be a result of multiple variables but that's my acoustic engineer's take without actually trying the experiment... In the end, apart from the pricing, there's nothing I dislike about the Susvara: look, design (comfortable, not too heavy), finish and especially voicing / sound quality. Per Fang's words, part of the magic is also the 50W Class A speaker amp driving the headphones.
I also briefly listened to the Shangri-la, it sounded significantly different from the Susvara, perhaps a bit too lean / bright to my taste coming from the systems I listened to on that day. The amp is huge, about 2x what I imagined from the pictures.
I could very briefly catch up with
@AnakChan, discussion to be continued over beers and dinner in next few weeks
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Overall, a very very nice time yesterday, a big thank you to Fujiya organizers for putting such nice event together and the manufacturers for making many efforts to attend the show.
cheers,
arnaud
