On Sunday, I had nothing to do in the afternoon and I had paid for a multi-day pass to CAF, so I went back a third time just before the show ended to revisit a few things. I confirmed that the LTA chain is bad for the CRBN 2 while I much preferred the Bricasti + Phantom combo, but when I was speaking with the two Audeze reps, one of them liked the LTA chain better. So YMMV, as always. The LTA Aero DAC was using the Ray Reserve 6SN7 tubes on the last day, and I thought they did sound a bit better than the stock GE 12SN7 tubes. I didn't listen long enough to get a good sense of the differences, but they sounded a bit richer and textured.
The issue with the CRBN 2 on the LTA chain is that the vocals are very prominent, but also very smooth. If a singer is that close to me, I expect to hear the spit in their mouth and the ripple and rumble of air passing over their vocal cords, all of those little sounds that accompany a voice. But those are smoothed over on the CRBN, so it sound unconvincing to me, like an airbrushed picture (or an AI generated image) of a person where the skin is impossibly smooth. The Bricasti chain provided more impact and dynamics, so those little gradations in sound are better rendered and it sounds more real to me.
Funnily enough, I didn't get the "smoothed over" sense when I listened to the X9000 on the LTA chain. I thought it was very well textured and detailed there. Practically on par with the BHSE. I suppose I should temper my previous statement of the Z10e being BHSE-tier by qualifying that this only applies with the X9000. A lot of people have said that the X9000 benefits from synergy more than power, and I can agree there.
I then moved downstairs to compare the X9000 with the X1 on the BHSE. This time, the X1 didn't fare as well. There was less background noise so I could do some better comparisons. The X1 is still a "miniature" X9000 in overall sound signature, but the vocals are rougher and scratchier, and the treble is not as extended nor as smooth. The soundstage is noticeably smaller and while there is a pleasant increase in bass quantity, it seems to be a sort of hump that hurts the sense of definition and texture in the bass; it's a bit more "one-note" than bass on the X9000. The X1 is still really good value though. But the X9000 noticeably pulled ahead during this second demo in spaciousness, smoothness, and refinement.
One of the nice parts of CAF is that it's not just a headphone/IEM show, so I get to explore the traditional audio world too. And this was the highlight of the show this year:
An MBL system featuring the
MBL 101 E MKII driven by a pair of MBL 9011 Mono amplifiers. They use spherical omnidirectional drivers (the silver shallot-shaped thing is actually the woofer) and the imaging from them was probably the most lifelike audio I have ever heard. When I was first listening, I looked around to see where the other speakers were ("are they hidden behind the plants?...") because the imaging was so large and wide that I didn't believe that those two funny-looking speakers were projecting all of that. When I brought my friend in to listen, he did the exact same thing! The positioning and space of the sound was unlike what I have heard from other two-channel speakers; there is no dead space between the speakers, it's not just a flat wall of sound anchored by the speakers, it's not like sound is being shot at me from a particular direction, but like there is a sound emanating into the room from a particular location.
I went to another room where they had these colossal electrostatic speakers that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, some 10 feet tall, and the imaging on those wasn't as convincing as what these diminutive MBL speakers produced. Not just the directionality, but the sense that each instrument is a sound source in the room that's radiating sound all around it into the room, as a real instrument would do. That sense of "radiative" rather than "directed" sound - which I call "openness" - is what I seek in headphones as well, and all of my favorite headphones exhibit this quality. Of course, a headphone must do this within the confines of the head-stage and this requires a different set of tricks in order to produce the illusion, but that's the sort of quality I look for, both in speakers, and in headphones. And I don't think I have ever encountered an example of openness as clear as I what heard from the MBL setup.
