[jjcha]

I dropped by show yesterday...

Hey Tyll, did you know the Benchmark guys know about the Overture/Coda stack? I was trying out the DAC1 with my portable transport (iHP-140), and when I told them that I also carry around a portable DAC, they asked me if it was the HeadRoom unit. I said that it was, and showed it to them when they asked to see it. They knew about the price and everything.

So you gotta drop the dirt - that Micro DAC looks bigger than my Overture. It's hard to tell - but it looks like there's additional switches/icons on the right? Did you incorporate crossfeed into the DAC?! We need details!

Otherwise, just another voice saying that I was very impressed with the Shure e4c. Hard to really tell in meet conditions, but out of my portable rig they certainly sounded great. I'll probably pick up a pair to compare to my Sensas and Shure e5c.

Other than that, I think the Sennheiser PX300's were the only new headphone I saw at the show. Looked like a PX200 with noise-cancelling. I was hoping that against the odds they would have brought a HE90, but oh well...

Best,

-Jason

 

[gloco]

I was there all three days and took a bonanza of pics and lots of chatting and palm pressing. Had a ton of fun and met some really cool people, namely Ellen and Rebecca from the Shure booth (once i mentioned Head-fi they got really excited and started talking about the e4's and how nutty you guys are

). I also spoke to a gentleman working the Sennheiser booth (running with a Lehmann headphone amp and a Headroom MOH) and he was really cool. I listened to the HD650's briefly and they sounded fine. The folks working the Gershmann Acoustics/Linar room were fabulous, very friendly and easy going. Just about every room i went into the spokespeople were very kind and gracious even when playing something that may have irritated them

Also, Klaus for Odyssey was a gentleman as usual and very cool. The speakers he had one display were only 3" or so thick and hung up as paintings. They sounded stellar with some David Bowie i tossed in, but sounded lousy with Garbage's "Version 2.0" cd.

All in all i had a blast and hopefully the show will be back in nyc a year from now. Thanks to Byron working at the music direct booth, very kind and gracious fellow (as well as the guy who hooked me up with the Tift Merrit lp) who recommended some jazz cds to me and saved me a couple of bucks too. Too bad the cd/vinyl selection this year was slim compared to last year. Seems a few vendors decided not to show up.

ps. Special thanks to Ellen at the shure booth for hooking me up with some tips (for free!) for my e2's after i inquired whether or not i could purchase some.

psx2: Tyll, i coulda swore i saw you around, i wasn't aware you would be attending the show. There's always next year for breakfast!

I'll try to get some pics uploaded to photo bucket in a jiffy...

link with pics: http://photobucket.com/albums/v168/g...ophile%202005/

 

[bozebuttons]

I checked out the show today,stopped at the shure booth to check out the e4c, If I was into portables I would pickup a pair of these,I prefered these over the ety 4s I had.
Bumped into Jpelg on the 9th floor.
I put an ear on the aural amp driving the K1000s at the Music direct booth,could have used a little more juice,Listened to the Max,& lehmann amp at the senn booth.
One interesting room which all you guys who use your computer as a source ,Or use mp3s was the Red Rose Music room
Mark Levinson the man demostrated the Burwen Bobcat Software & Daniel Hertz Model 1 USB Dac & software(1500.00) in a simple system using a Sony Viao laptop A intergrated amp & his small speakers.
Using mp3 files fed by this Dac& software,this was a extremley musical system. It is amazing how good mp3s can sound.
I picked up 3 Isomike SACDs from Kimber Cable as well as some SACDs from music Direct.
The Kimber Isomike demo was one of the highlights of the show.
I was not impressed with a lot of the rooms sound wize but there where some standouts.
The Mbl system was impressive even though they had a really undersized room, Joseph audio Driven by Manely gear , The Talon speakers,The Khama
& JmLabs alto rooms where also good.
The Sound by singer room had a giveaway at 1 pm You had to be present to win, some people missed out as thier names where called but they wheren't there. Prizes where Vandersteen 2ce signatures,Clearaudio turntable setup,Pathos intergrated(wanted that one) JMlabs 2 way speakers, some Kubula soshna interconnects & power cables .Some happy people after that Drawing.All you had to do is fill out a card & drop it in a box.
The show seemed to be missing a lot of venders from the past.
It wasn't to crowded.

 

[jpelg]

My first time at this show. I've been out of the speaker market for a while now, and don't know what is out there at all. So I was quite overwhelmed. Some beautiful products were demonstrated this weekend. Not sure if they all would pry my paychecks out of my hands for the next six months, but it's nice to see enthusiastic engineers peddle their wares and their visions. They all think they are doing it the best way possible, and their passion is evident.

Again, a lot of the really high end, two-channel stuff really went over my head. Was I listening to the speakers, the (5-figure!) sources, the tubes (when applicable), the cables, the room, ... what?! Still, a lot of fun.

The Merlin speakers (I think they were VSM-M's?) sounded pretty nice, as did the Von Schweikert's (VR4's?). But the ones that blew me away were the mbl 101E's (I think that was the model). They seemed to disappear and leave only the musicians playing in front of me. A truly stellar audio experience.

Headphone-wise there was little to see/hear. At the Sennheiser booth I listened to the HD595's for the first time, and was quite impressed. Much 'punchier' than their older brethren. The PX200's don't sound as good as my AKG K26P's though (unamped). I passed by the Shure booth without trying anything, but they seemed to be doing a great job educating people about headphones & IEM's. I noticed that the NAIM booth was demoing their recordings (I didn't even know they did that) with Beyer DT931's - interesting. Benchmark was using a Panasonic DVD player as a transport, citing that it was the only player they found that outputs 192 digitally - again, interesting.

The home theatre stuff was very cool to see & hear. Hewlett-Packard showed off their brand new 65in television/monitor - man, this is about as perfect as it gets! They didn't even have a price set, as it is not released yet, but said it would be "competitive" (LOL

!).

I was nice running into Bozebuttons, and share a presentation of Innersound's new electrostatic full-range loudspeakers (only four people allowed at a time!). In all, a nice way to spend the afternoon. Next year, the local Head-Fi contingency should organize to meet up and take the exhibitors on together. Maybe make a breakfast tradition?

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

It’s so nice to be back home and far from the madding crowd, listening to music on the living room Swans and typing on a keyboard that works. Ahhhhhhhhh.......

As jpelg said, I think the show was pretty weak for headphones. But there were a few places to get some good sound on cans.

The first thing you have to do is get great sound to reproduce; I always head directly to the Chesky booth for a chat with Sal.

If I had had to pick one label to take to a desert island with me it would be Blue Note. If I got two I’d take Chesky next. Technically the best in my opinion and the music is great!

Here’s a guy that’s been dishing out great headphone sound for longer than me. Todd Garfinkle is the head between the ears of MA Recordings. He has demoed his exquisitely recorded and very exotic music on Stax headphones for way longer than I’ve been around.

Music in hand it’s off to find some headphones. You didn’t have to go far, right inside the door you’d find Shure.

The only problem was that they all had their IEMs in and couldn't understand a thing you said.

Actually they were getting PUMMELED. I’m gonna ask for one of the boxes of ear tips they were using for the tour.

I’ve always found the E5 had too much bass; the E3 didn’t have the highs; and the E2 was good for a portable radio, maybe. But the E4 is a sound piece of gear. They look damn good, too.

I had a good listen on the Micro Stack and they sounded quite coherent, very nicely punchy with no skreaching, and reasonably liquid mid-range; quite an accomplishment for this type of can. I did detect that they were rolled of at the very highs, but I’m getting old and it could be my ears---the measurements should show something like that pretty well. However, I had a very satisfying listen, and have no hesitation saying that these are a solid value at their price point and should be especially good for rockers, maybe not as with chamber music. I was satisfied.

That is, until I saw Mike Santucci at the end of the booth. He checked out the micro stack with his IEMs while he did my ear impressions. A little sign language later and we had struck a deal: A new HeadRoom Micro Stack for some ProPhonics and ER9 attenuators. We both shook hands smiling.

Most of the headphones stuff at the show was in the record label booths doing duty as music sampling machines. It is a great way to have your stuff shown. HeadRoom was conspicuously absent on the floor this year---except, of course, for yours truly. I have an inside line there, and I know it’s because want to show the old stuff this close to launch day. That, or they knew the fat guy could cover the floor.

Lehman, OTOH, was everywhere. In the Music Direct booth…

… the Sennheiser booth (with a Max)….

… and a couple of other places I think, too.

The elusive disc was showing off a lot of headphone stuff: K1000s, the AKG Hero 999 wireless, and an Aural Audition headphone amp.

Music Direct was also demoing music on some Musical Fidelity hardware. Notice the 650s, they were everywhere, too.

This is Rory Rall with Benchmark showing off the DAC 1.

And here he is checking out the Micro Stack.

Telarc had a big CD carousel with a Grace.

I must have been buried in a cave or something but I didn’t realize Naim had a label. The have some headphone amps, too.

That takes care of downstairs, so I headed up to Sennheiser. In addition to the 650s shown above with the amps, they were also displaying their wireless cans.

Some of their new mid-price stuff mixed in with a little older product.

And the cheap stuff. But wait! Notice the closer of the two. These are the HD201 and the best $25 sealed headphone I’ve ever heard. These are the ones to buy as cheap gifts for friends.

That’s it for the headphones. The only thing worth bothering with after putting this post together for the last 3 hours, on and off, is the Burwen Bobcat demo that Marc Levinson did. It was de-lovely!

The little gizmo is a USB DSP DAC in a box that does some magic to the signal to make it sound good. I don’t fall for this stuff when it’s baloney, but I heard a lot of folks talking about this thing and I spent quite a while in the hall with the guys that did the DSP and this thing is the real deal. They didn’t tell me what’s going on other than to say it’s a brew of fairly straightforward audio processes. But, Marc believed in the brew and did a great demo. I think half the joy of it was music played at a nice level. But the other half was some pretty pleasing sound from 128kbs MP3 files. Yes, you heard right, and it sounded damn good. It was pretty low key music, nothing really too taxing (like cymbals that really show up the swishyness of low bit rate mp3s), but it was damn good to these ears. The box and software will sell for around $1500.

Night Folks.

 

[Jahn]

Awesome impressions, I'm glad you got off that nasty keyboard! I'm very interested in this line-

And the cheap stuff. But wait! Notice the closer of the two. These are the HD201 and the best $25 sealed headphone I’ve ever heard. These are the ones to buy as cheap gifts for friends.

Right now I have open and sealed for home, and open for portable. Looks like a sealed portable might be in the cards...dare this Grado fan buy his first Senn? Time will tell... thanks again for the scouting trip!

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyll Hertsens i'll post sme px hen i GET BACK. Man what a piece o dung tis thing s. So no answers for brekky today so I'll just rea my book with eggs.

Hen? Dung? Eggs? Are they holding that thing in a barnyard?
Quote:

Had a nice long cat with Gratand Susan of Shure

Oh, it's a cat show...
Quote:

and it sounds like the BI WIGS AT Shure are getting behing he IEM concept as a wholeand really throwing their weight at it.

Overweight ladies with wigs... yep, must be a cat show.
Quote:

anyway we can expet lots of god thgs from them.

Wait a sec... is it being held in a church?
Quote:

I'm ery mouch looking forward to doing some testing of Sensa vs UE10s here shortly. The whole timehe did my ear impressions he wa jamming onour new stuff. We woked out a nice trade.

Pig Latin... a barnyard it must be.
Quote:

I"LL PoPOpost some impressions of Sennheisers st up later maybe. Butfirst I have t thrw this keyboard out the window.

GREAT idea...

[size=xx-small]P.S. looks like it was a great show...[/size]

 

[gloco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bozebuttons The show seemed to be missing a lot of venders from the past. It wasn't to crowded.

I spoke to someone about that and he said it wasn't looking good, kind of a bleak omen for the show. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't come around again in NY next year. Noticed how many rooms were unoccupied on the 9th and 10th floors? I noticed that too. Noticed how few cd/vinyl retailers were around? Yep...things ain't looking so hot for the show.

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

Quote:

Originally Posted by immtbiker We have made the world a better place. Who woulda thought?

In my talking with a number of writers, I did have a chance to evangelize for the headphone enthusiast world. On a number of occasions I made the comment that I felt like we were a model for what audio hobbyism should be, and, in fact, were actually much like what the high-end used to be. I got a surprising amout of agreement from the folks I talked to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjcha So you gotta drop the dirt ..... We need details!

No, I don't. If you want dirt you should have come to breakfast.

Okay. I'll do a post soon in the Coda/Overture thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bozebuttons on the Burwin Bobcat It is amazing how good mp3s can sound.

I'm glad you got a chance to hear that. I thought it was a great demo. I particularly feel that it was a strong presentation because he played the music at a good level. It's rediculous how loud the rooms have gotten; I can't stand to be in most of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bozebuttons The Mbl system was impressive even though they had a really undersized room, Joseph audio Driven by Manely gear , The Talon speakers,The Khama & JmLabs alto rooms where also good.

I agree completely. Jeff Joseph always does a good show (that's why he gets best sound in show so often).

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpelg But the ones that blew me away were the mbl 101E's (I think that was the model). They seemed to disappear and leave only the musicians playing in front of me. A truly stellar audio experience.

I agree, the MBL room, in my experience, usually has the best imaging at the show---even though they play it too loud too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpelg At the Sennheiser booth I listened to the HD595's for the first time, and was quite impressed.

The first day of the show I was demoing the Micro Stack with some recabled 595s. People really liked them. I think I like demoing stuff on the 595 because they are a bit crisper sounding than the 650 and in the loud ambience of the show it really makes the music stand out. I've come to actually like the 595 very much. I spent a while listening to the stack with the 595, 650 and 880 befor leaving Bozeman to pick the cans I wanted to demo with, I ended up selecting the 595 and bringing the 650s as spare. I think the 880 is just a tad too bright.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpelg Next year, the local Head-Fi contingency should organize to meet up and take the exhibitors on together. Maybe make a breakfast tradition?

I'm in. If the show survives

Quote:

Originally Posted by gloco Yep...things ain't looking so hot for the show.

I don't know...I think they'll probably try to keep it going, but it did seem VERY thin. I don't like to be a naysayer, but the high-end bussiness needs to do something pretty drastic if it wants to exist in a powerfull way. People have been talking about its demise for years, this is the first time I think it's really becoming apparent. Which means it's probably too late to do much about it to recover with any kind of speed.

BTW I was missing my picture of the E4 when I posted last night and have edited the thread so you may want to go back and have a look at them.

 

[insomniac]

I checked out the HES on Sunday as well. Really would have liked to meet Tyll, but didn't realize the show was going on until Saturday evening. Really wished they had their new line ready and a booth to show it off.

As everyone said, there wasn't a whole lot of headphone gear at the show. Sennheiser had a booth and had a large selection of their line on display. But the only new and noteworthy item I noticed was the PXC-300. The Sennheiser rep told me it had improved NoiseGuard (Sennheiser's active noise cancelling technology) that would not be interfered by certain cell phone frequencies. Also has improved ear cushions and a new stiffer and smaller carrying case. Doesn't seem like a huge leap forward if people are upgrading. They had the Lehmann Black Cube and Headroom Max (w/ SA) powering their high end phones. It was the first chance I had to listen to the HD595. In my very brief encounter with them, I was pretty impressed. Punchier sound and nice build quality. The Sennheiser guys were nice fellows too.

As Tyll noted, it was interesting to see that Naim not only had a record label but also a headphone amp. It was an unlabelled black box with a headphone jack and a volume dial. They had them driving Beyer DT931's. First time seeing those as well. Listened for only about 30 seconds but they were pretty comfortable. Can't really comment on the sound. I'd also like to note that of all the booths and exhibitors I visited that day, Naim was definitely the most unfriendlly and snooty. They were like this at BOTH their booth on the 3rd floor and their room on the 10th. Of course I may have just caught them at a bad time, twice, but still left a bad taste in my mouth.

Shure was there of course. Got to try the e4c and was pretty impressed. Listened out of my own iPod and the sound was very full, balanced and crisp. It just didn't sound like I was listening via IEM's.

Elusive Disc had an Aural Audition headphone amp at their booth. Source was a Shanling T200 and the headphones were the RS-1's. First off, that thing is a beast. It's about the height of two Headroom MOHs stacked on top of each other and it must weight about 25 pounds or so. Also has a stepped attenuator. I listened for a couple minutes was quite impressed with the sound. Of course this could have as much to do with the RS-1's and the Shanling player but the sound was very smooth yet crisp.

The Channel Islands headphone amp was also present at another booth. Powering the Senn HD650. Creek had their OBH-11 and OBH-21 headphone amps on hand.

Benchmark had their own booth showing off their critically acclaimed DAC-1. Great product and really nice guys to boot. I hope they sold a bunch of units at the show.

Roy Hall was there with his Music Hall products. I noticed he had the MMF25 Mark II on hand. Physically looks exactly like the original MMF25. I asked him about the difference and he said that they removed the HDCD decoding and put the money toward using better components, resulting in higher quality redbook playback. The MSRP is the same as the original.

Just jumping around a bit, they had a Toshiba Gigabit in the digital music room. While I didn't get a chance to listen to it for more than a few seconds, the build quality and screen were very nice. It's also quite light. The new touch cross is kind of interesting. Each end of the cross works as a button. I think it works better than the touch pad on the Zen Micro.

The Tao and Delphi portable MyFi XM radios were in that same room. The unit is very bulky for a portable but the idea of satellite radio on the go is intriguing to me. If the battery life wasn't a meager 5 hours, I might've taken the plunge already.

There were dozens of speaker setups and demos at the show. While I didn't spend a great deal of time at any single setup, what I was most impressed with at the show were the Paradigm Reference S8's. Wow! Wanted to have a listen to the JM Lab Utopia speakers but never got the chance. My second place item was the Epos EL-3 speakers. VERY impressive sound coming from such small speakers.

Almost forgot... got my first chance to have a listen to a Stax setup. As with most other things at the show, my time with it was brief.. but wow... the first thing that struck me was how incredible the imaging was. I actually said, wow.

That's it for now.

 

[dhwilkin]

I've heard plenty of good things about those MBL speakers, but aren't they really, really expensive? One of these days, I'll make it out to one of these hi-fi shows.

 

[bozebuttons]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dhwilkin I've heard plenty of good things about those MBL speakers, but aren't they really, really expensive? One of these days, I'll make it out to one of these hi-fi shows.

There where 2 pairs in the MBl room I listened to the bigger pair forgot the model # $18000.00 a pair show special 15,000.00.the smaller looked like a 2way was $10,000.00 a pair.
I really liked the bigger ones,unbeliveable bass impact from a speaker that size.

 

[gloco]

The mbl's were great, but they did play them too damn loud. I wound up putting on my e2's to save my hearing

The Gershman rig was killer, featuring the Black Swan speaker system. Great bass handling and a very open, spacious sound. Percussion was very realistic and everything was done just right. The Chord room was also a marvel to listen to, i believe the speakers they had on display were the Tetra 305s. Very nice sound, detailed and a smooth high end which made them enjoyable, i also happened to see Wes Phillips from Stereophile in that room on friday.

Did anyone check out the Art on-wall speakers in the Odyssey room? Very cool indeed. I also enjoyed Aperion's 633 tower speakers, Analysis Audio's Omega planar-ribbon speakers (they looked like cardboard cutouts when i first walked in, only then realizing they were speakers!

). The Merlin room had the VSM-MX on hand and they sounded great too. The Almarro room also had a nice rig setup (speakers: M2A) with a tube amp (A50125A). The Epos line in the Music Hall room were nice as usual. The M5's were up and running and they sound damn good for sound coming out of a small box. I guess Roy Hall was helping me out, i annoyed him a bit with a Tift Merrit cd, but he seemed pretty cool and up front about his opinions. I also tried out Ascendo line on the second floor and they had a rather large room. Not sure if this affected their rig, but it seemed to work well in the open space, but i found the rig a little bright.

I guess that's about it, unless i think of anything else.

 

[Salt Peanuts]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpelg Benchmark was using a Panasonic DVD player as a transport, citing that it was the only player they found that outputs 192 digitally - again, interesting.

Anyone remembers or knows which Panasonic DVD player it was?

 

[jefemeister]

I can't find any info on Burwen Bobcat or Daniel Hertz. What are these exactly?