CanJam SoCal 2024 Impressions

Like a good sneeze… CanJam SoCal 2024 has come and gone. We’re all back from the land of sunshine and sand, fresh with some impressions of the gear we tried. As always it was great to meet folks, chat, and be generally unhinged nerds about audio. With that said, I’d like to go through some of my highlights of the event.

As always, big shoutouts to Jude, Warren, and all the rest of the head-fi crew for making these events possible. It really is a treat for the community.

Folks can feel free to chime in here with their impressions as well.

Gear Impressions (in no particular order):

Sony MDR-M1 - It sounded reasonable to me for a studio style headphone. Their open-back MV-1 is of course a bit warmer throughout the lower mids, though that also has a bit of excess 5-6khz - I did a review on that one. The M1 closed-back on the other hand sounded perhaps a bit more clinical and analytic throughout the rest of the response by comparison. It makes sense since that lower mid section was a bit leaner sounding.

I also listened to this right after hearing the craziest recording in a high res format (I think DSD of some kind?) off the MV1, which was a goose-bumps inducing experience and easily one of the best audio experiences I had at the show. I don’t expect all music to sound like that, but that particular recording was exceptional, and I really love the form factor of these headphones.

HiFiMAN HE1000 Unveiled - Folks know that I hate the ‘unveiled’ concept, but on this one the implementation is a lot less anxiety-inducing. There’s actually a lot less surface area of the membrane exposed to the world compared to the Susvara Unveiled, meaning it’s less likely to get punctured by various things one might have lying around.

As far as the sound quality is concerned, this one is one of the more balanced egg-shaped HiFiMAN headphones out there. It has noticeably less treble compared to the Arya platform, and even the HE1000 platform. So the ear gain is kept in line a bit better with the rest of the response. Also importantly the typical HiFiMAN midrange dip around 1.5khz is a lot less here than on their other models.

I liked this headphone a lot, especially with binaural recordings from Allison Krauss that they had there (this is a wtf experience if I ever had one, my goodness). If I had one critique it’s that for me there might be a bit of excess 4khz, causing a kind of ‘clenched’ presentation to certain tones - but it’s really a nitpick since the rest of it was quite balanced. They let me take one with me so here are some measurements:

B&K 5128

GRAS 43AG

If you can handle the ‘unveiled’ concept, I could see this being someone’s endgame headphone - and they also improved the more modal response of this series (the jaggies in the midrange are lessened), so it’s a great platform for some EQ as well.

SJY Horizon Closed - One of the better closed-back headphones I’ve heard. I’m going to see if I can get him to send me one to measure, but it’s effectively a closed-back planar with a custom driver, and… yeah the tonality was on point, without any weird FR features you typically get with closed-back headphones. I’m looking forward to hearing it in a better environment and for longer, but my initial impression of this one was very positive.

ETA O2 - This is an on-ear headphone… and it was really good! And yes, on-ear headphones categorically shouldn’t exist, since they crush the pinna. But if I were compelled to use one, it would be this one. Now, for what its worth, I only heard this at the hotel bar while some friends and I were chatting, and shoutouts to the gentleman who insisted that I try this, because I kind of couldn’t believe how good it was for the form factor. But also, I didn’t get as much of the pinna-crushing discomfort I typically get from other on-ear headphones. So the ETA folks are onto something with this one.

Raal Immanis - A kind community member let us demo this headphone for a while before the show, and finally it was from a source that wasn’t an A&K player. Unfortunately my impressions didn’t change that much. The thing is… I fully believe those who love it are genuinely having great experiences with it but at the end of the day it just isn’t the kind of experience I’m looking for.

Its particular colorations were once again evident and immediately obvious to me, some more glaring than others. To my ear, while I can get past the somewhat uneven midrange, there’s a strong high treble peak that would show up for me that I just couldn’t get past. We spent some time considering how some of this would translate to the positive experiences some folks report, and I think it may actually come down to the forward 1khz presence that’s almost kind of Stax-like. For anyone who has heard an L700, there’s a familiarity there with the midrange presentation, so I suppose I can see it. It’s just not for me.

Viking Weave Draupnir - This is Skedra’s monstrosity of a headphone. I say monstrosity because it is the most unhinged and ridiculous concept. It has two glass drivers and an electrical filter, which makes sense if you want good bass in an open-back headphone that rises up into the sub-bass. So this is bass to the high heavens, but the thing is… this is also good quality bass. It’s not that muddy or bloated kind of sound that you may have heard with other bassy headphones, and that’s in large part thanks to the bass shelf starting low enough that it doesn’t mask everything else.

Importantly, it also has mids, and fairly balanced sounding treble. I’m not sure what the final version of this headphone is going to look like, but IMO this is the real bass violence headphone, and if you listen to electronic music and want it to slam and take your head off… this will do that.

HEDDphone 2 GT - Some disclosure here, I did get to listen to this beforehand, but I also listened to it at the show. The tuning is very different from the original HEDDphone 2. Where the original was a bit withdrawn in the ear gain, leading to a darker more laid back presentation, the new one is a lot closer to the sound signature of the Meze Empyrean 2. So it’s more clarity focused for the ear gain, but it also has a forward midbass section adding a lot of warmth to the sound that way. Personally I much prefer the new one, and I think those who didn’t like the more laid back response of the original will be more into the GT.

Audeze CRBN2 - I’m not sure how I feel about this one yet. The original CRBN was in my view the right direction for Audeze to take, and a strong departure from their previous sound signature. At the same time, it had really strong ear gain, similar to the LCD-5 and the MM500 - perhaps a bit too much in this direction for me personally, but clearly there’s good thinking behind this change.

The CRBN 2 seemed to take that same concept, and add a bass lift through what they call “SLAM” technology. I love the acronym… and yeah it does do exactly that. But at the same time I kind of wish they had taken this opportunity to tone down some of the ear gain a bit. We’ll see how it is after a longer session, as I hope to evaluate one soon.

Warwick Aperio Goldensound Edition - Obviously I’m biased here, so take this for what its worth. This was highlight of the show for many, and yes it sounded great to me too. They had it set up in an enclosed booth, which is always a welcome concept at such a busy convention. The sound here was a lot more smooth compared to the original Aperio, and a bit warmer overall. So it had less of the original Aperio’s unique editorialization but also a new kind of sound signature that I think will be more palatable to a wider range of listeners. What’s interesting to me with this one is that he tuned it by ear, and then measured it, and the measured result is very good as well.

DMS Omega - Same as above, I have a strong bias here, so that’s what I’m hedging against. This was my first time hearing the Omega. I see what he’s going for with this and I’d say overall it’s decent. But I also feel what’s great about the HD 6XX and HD 650 got somewhat lost in the process, that being the more forward lower mid section to balance out the strong ear gain presence. So to my ear it’s a bit too forward around 3-4khz, and then the more relaxed treble presence kind of makes that stand out a bit more than I’d like personally.

Still, I imagine a lot of people will like this, even if it isn’t for me personally, and its wideband tuning is clearly very well done.

Other Highlights

The Seminars:

Blaine’s seminar was of course the highlight of the show for me, and I think for a lot of people who perhaps like the idea of understanding headphone performance with data, but like us aren’t entirely satisfied with the existing data visualization paradigm we’re currently living in. The point of his talk was basically that we’re all doing it wrong and we need to measure on multiple heads to get a more complete perspective of how headphones actually perform. I did record this one, so I’ll be posting it… somewhere.

Dr. Sean Olive’s talk had two parts, one was a continuation of the IEM research he’s doing with the 5128 and the other was on Method of Adjustment research to determine the merits of an additional ear gain filter.

I’ll need to go over this a bit more in detail and what this means, but basically there’s some evidence from previous research, including Harman’s own work (2013 to 2018 ear gain differences) that suggests it’s worth looking into ear gain as a point of adjustment. His current methodology, which applied bass and treble filters and held them constant, found that while some did adjust the ear gain higher or lower, the average was in the middle and resulted in no change.

This suggests it may be worth moving from using Harman 2018 filters that include a 3khz adjustment back to 2015… however we probably shouldn’t jump the gun since there’s some uncertainty surrounding which filters to hold constant, particularly in the bass.

With regards to the IEM research, this was a continuation of what he had been working on before, but interestingly… part of the conclusion this time was that some adjustment to the treble may be necessary (something many of us have been pestering him about for some time).

To me the bigger and perhaps more surprising takeaway is that the same people who rated the SoundGuys target highly (a good match with JM-1 DF + filters) also rated Harman IE highly, and those are very different targets! This indicates to me at least that, congruent with what Dr. Olive has said in the past, people have a preference for proportional bass and treble. So if you increase the treble, the bass needs to go up proportionally, and similarly if you decrease it.

Of course, still to be investigated is the effect of insertion depth, different starting points, and a lot more. I’m currently doing some testing with the replicator IEM and it has a fairly long and thin nozzle, meaning there could be an additional explanation for why many of the more conventional IEM designs with a shallower fit are perceived as shouty, glaring, or too bright when tuned to Harman IE.

When you’re able to insert an IEM more deeply into the ear it effectively deletes the length mode resonance around 5-7khz the further it gets inserted. And this may be happening to a certain degree in practice when listeners are using the replicator IEM, where it isn’t happening when they’re using more conventional IEMs.

This is of course just a theory, and something to test. But at the moment it’s worth noting that the IEM research still shouldn’t be considered as comprehensive as the headphone or speaker research when it comes to understanding listener preferences. So the latter is still what we need to rely on for now.

Chats with cool people:

I got to spend some time talking to the gentleman from B&K, and they had the full rig setup at the show, measuring people’s headphones. DMS did this thing where he’d listen to a headphone while facing away, try to describe its tonality and then guess how it would measure on the 5128. He got a lot of it correct!

There was also this crazy acoustic camera setup that could visualize where there were gaps or leaks in the seal. That would certainly streamline my process but it costs… a lot. Like considerably out of budget for all of us, but cool nonetheless.

He also told us about some of the things they were working on. I’m not sure how much of that is public so I’ll refrain from commenting on that here, but they are aware of the demand for additional pinnae, where their system would function perfectly to be able to swap in different ears to test headphone behavior variation on.

We also got to spend time with Dr. Craig Stark, a researcher at UC Irvine, who took us to his MRI lab and scanned our brains for a project. I have some fun footage of Oratory’s brain now, which I imagine will be super useful for the inevitable cloning we do. We’ll release more info on this soon but the gist of it is to get a full scan of our individual ears… for… reasons. But it’s all in the spirit of getting a better understanding of how we each individually hear things, and having an increased perspective of more heads and ears.

And of course, the most important highlight of the show was getting to hang out with community members and friends both during and after the event. I especially want to shoutout some who I got to spend time with, Mark Ryan (Super Review), Zeos, Oratory1990, Josh V, Adrian, Scott, Joe, Skedra, David, Juan… and all the folks who make this madness a good time and something I genuinely look forward to every year.

29 Likes

I’ll organize my thoughts for a list of impressions later today, but for now here’s a measurement of the RAAL Immanis on my clone 43AG (KB006x clone + clone 711 coupler), displayed against the DF HRTF of the fixture with Harman 2018 filters on it.

I’ll give brief impressions of this one. I didn’t really like it because, like many expensive/flagship headphones, it has weird mids to direct the listener’s attention in a new way than they may have experienced prior, and a bright spot in the treble that makes things sound “extra detailed” (but for me its just wonky, glassy, and a bit harsh).

I understand why people like it, it makes the music artificially engaging and fiery sounding. But neutral it is not, and its frankly way too expensive for the sound quality.

9 Likes

I have to ask- how did you manage to measure this? :joy:

1 Like

Someone who owned the Immanis at the show gave us a unit to measure because, despite what some may think, people who buy flagship headphones are often still actually interested in seeing how they measure.

4 Likes

I mean, I had almost given up on seeing measurements of this so I am very happy. I definitely knew there was super wonky mids and too much 1 kHz in there, and pinpointing the treble intensity helps too. For what it’s worth, one of those “too tubey” amps that basically sound like a smoothening filter kinda helps here. I tried it with the Viva Belva in London and it did make it easier on the mids.

Oratory should hopefully get one in from RAAL soon as well, although that comes with a caveat of needing to talk to them about why things measure as they do :roll_eyes:

1 Like

Can you provide any additional information on this? Cursory Googling brings back nothing. Is it possibly the 5.1 mix of the Live SACD?

2 Likes

Sadly I can’t find the mix. I will keep looking though. It was binaural

2 Likes

hallo

resolve
goosebumps
dsd
interest me
please proceed with your inquiry

Thanks for taking the time to share impressions :slight_smile: Great read.

2 Likes

Thank you! Can’t wait for more impressions on the Sony MDR-M1 and, hopefully, a review (pls don’t tell me it’s not going to happen).

I think what @Resolve listened to was a live recording by the SONY rep that was then played back on MV1.

1 Like

Some of my impressions from CanJam SoCal '24:

ZMF Atrium open - I beelined to the ZMF room because I knew from last year that it would be a rare opportunity to compare models and get a good deal. I ended up falling in love with the Atrium Red Heart and bought a pair. Definitely not a Harman tune but great in its own right. Very relaxed and spacious with upper bass that is somehow elevated without sounding boomy. These are a great compliment/counterpoint to my Meze Empyrean II.

I wasn’t as impressed as I expected to be with the Aegis tube amp I demoed them on. But it was pretty noisy in there. I don’t have the budget right now anyway and if I do go Aegis, I will probably build my own.

HEDDphone 2 GT - This was the first thing I tried in the main floor. I tried the HEDDphone 2 at last year’s CanJam SoCal and was impressed by the dynamics - they punch hard - but not the tonality. I felt they were great for drums but not much else. The GT was definitely an improvement in tuning. I’m anxious to see a full review, but I liked them enough it was tempting to buy a pair. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I’d just bought the Atrium so sanity prevailed.

Warwick Aperio Goldensound Edition - I wish I could say something insightful on these, but I didn’t get a listen. Day 2 I was 2nd in line at the door but there were already at least half a dozen people in line by the time I got there. After waiting 15 mins while having a great conversation with the dude behind me, I gave up. At that rate it would have been mid afternoon before I got in and I had Dr. Olive at 11 and a Sennheiser HE-1 appointment at 11:45. Speaking of which…

Sennheiser HE-1 - If you know me at all, you know that I am a huge fan of the band Tool and I judge almost all audio equipment from the perpective of “does it Tool?”. Well the HE-1 is no slouch on any music, but I was a bit underwhelmed listening to the opening of Fear Inoculum through it. Did I have any complaints? No. I was conscious this was very likely the most “correct” the song had ever sounded to me. It just didn’t WOW me. Then I put on King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s “Blue Morpho”, a track I use to test spaciousness. That’s when it happened. I couldn’t help it. I honestly wept a bit at the shear beauty. I can only imagine how good these sound to someone who is really into live music genres. It was pretty incredible. $60k incredible? Hell no! But I’m glad I got to take one for a spin.

Audeze CRBN2 - I was warned by the guy behind me in the Aperio line to use the energizer on the right - an LTA Z10E. He didn’t like the other energizer at all. So I waited for the Z10E. At first I really liked them. Very precise, big punch, excellent detail. But after awhile they sounded very shouty and eventually tiring. Like they were constantly trying to prove how great they sound. Hard pass for me especially as I don’t have an energizer and the price is too high even if I did.

Viking Weave Draupnir - I was pretty excited about these as I’m a bit of a basshead if it is done well. It wasn’t. Too muddy. Not as bad as the HarmonicDyne Zeos Eris, but not enough to justify the rumored price. BUT I later heard from a friend who had extensive time with them that, although Skedra indicated to me the two examples sounded the same, the carbon fiber model that I did not try had much tighter bass. I’m looking forward to hearing the production version of this.

HFA Dahlia - This is one of those bootstrapped, mostly 3D printed headphones similar to the DMS Project Omega. I like them a lot. They are lightweight and comfortable. Tuning sounded pretty close to Harman. They also have a neat trick where you can adjust the tuning by swapping out the resonators, which takes about a minute. They come with Balanced and Dynamic resonators and there are plans for future resonators too. I preferred the Dynamic. I’m definitely keeping an eye on these and will probably pick up a pair eventually.

Warwick Bravura - I heard these last year and just wanted to confirm my impressions. Yep, still an amazing headphone system. All of the detail and “speed” of an e-stat with excellent bass response and punch. If I was ever going to one-and-done a headphone setup, this would be it.

I demoed a few tube amps as well: ZMF Aegis, Ampsandsound Mogwai SE, and LTA Velo, but nothing really grabbed me. Last year I tried the Mogwai SE and was impressed but this year not so much. Maybe the environment was just too loud. I don’t know how I’m going to choose my next tube amp but I’m not really in the market right now anyway.

9 Likes

Sounds like you had a great time! And congrats on the Atrium, it’s one of my absolute favorites!

1 Like

That’s a real bummer. Draupnir was gonna be my ‘firm’ 2025 purchase. Might have to be the “LCD6” then.

I’d wait before making that decision. The Draupnir were prototype units, my trial was brief, and apparently I should have waited to hear the carbon fiber model.