Yes, and I was wondering if I was the only one. Nice to know it's not just me.Anybody else experiencing CanJam withdrawal?
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CanJam Dallas 2023 Impressions Thread (November 11-12, 2023)
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- Thread starter AxelCloris
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Definitely. Especially since this was my first CanJam... it doesn't really hit you how much of a privilege it is to check out all sorts of cool gear like that until it's over. I've already started saving up for a Vérité Open. My wallet will probably hate me but my ears sure won't!Anybody else experiencing CanJam withdrawal?
On that note, it really was a great show, and for a first CanJam experience I couldn't've asked for much better, I think. I definitely underprepared for this one cuz I didn't really know what exactly I was getting myself into, but I'll definitely have more ready to go next time I get the opportunity to attend. I've never really had any sort of opportunity to demo anything of this caliber, and it came at the perfect time since I've been looking to free myself from "mid-fi hell" and start looking into nicer equipment. Demoing is essential once you start hitting the higher price points.
eugene2
100+ Head-Fier
Was Lina stack on 2v or 6v when listening to Susvara?Since people are giving their impressions, I will give mine. I went to CanJam both Saturday and Sunday. I spent much of that time in the ZMF room, and bought a ZMF headphone. ZMF is awesome, endgame, unbeatable. I can't say enough good about ZMF, especially how tailored to your needs you can get with ZMF depending on everything from sound preferences to budget to comfort and everything in between. They simply make the best headphones, period. Not that you will necessarily love every headphone they make, but they have enough variety in their inventory that between the headphone, wood, pads, cables, etc, you can tailor at least a few of their headphones to be perfect for you. No one else does that. I can't say enough good about ZMF. The only bad thing about ZMF is that they are so good that they ruin you when you try anything else. See below.
Now for everything other than ZMF.......different story. I tried out most of the headphones and amps that were in the main room. I liked the Focal Utopia and Focal Stellia, though I can't wear Focals because of the hotspot they produce on my head. I tried Audezes and thought they were OK but nothing great. Again, maybe I am just spoiled by ZMF. The LCD-X and LCD-XC is OK for a sub-$1500 headphone, if you can tolerate the weight and the hotspot. I tried the Audeze electrostat and didn't find anything exceptional about it at all. Same with the LCD-5. Nothing wrong with them, I just didn't find anything exceptional in them, certainly not anything that would justify the price tag. I also tried a ModHouse Tungston, and it felt cheaply made and I couldn't get it to a listenable volume, not even on a Ferrum Oor. I then tried a Spirit headphone and after 30 seconds I couldn't stand it, so I moved on. Same with the Fostex 900/909 (I thought they would be painful, but turns out they were just boring and unexceptional), and Senn HD820 (I really REALLY wanted to like it).
I tried a Susvara on a Lina stack. It did a lot of things right, but it seemed too bright to be usable, and I had to crank the Lina stack to maximum volume just to hear it at a barely decent level. I prefer bright headphones, but these were too much. I have a pair of Hifiman HE1000SEs, and though the Susvara was more detailed and had a bigger soundstage, the Susvaras are probably for me unlistenable because of the level of brightness and pin-prick in-your-face detail, which is an experience I don't have with my HE1000SEs. I had the same experience with a Dianna Abyss: good tuning and slam, but excessive brightness and pin-prick in-your-face detail, which with the Diana Abyss actually gave me a headache. I have never had that happen before with any headphone. At first I though it sounded good, but then the headache set in, and it was clear why. I also tried a 1266 Abyss on a Woo amp and besides being incredibly uncomfortable (I felt like it might rip my ears off when I took it off), the sound was so bland and boring that I couldn't stand more than a minute of it. That was in the Stax room, and I tried some other Stax headphones and also found them boring and couldn't stand more than a couple minutes of them.
I also tried some other headphones on another Lina stack and was unimpressed. It felt like the Lina stack was coloring the sound to smooth it out and in the process making it slightly artificial sounding, almost like the soap-opera effect you get with some TVs. I suspect a Schiit Jotenhiem and Bifrost would be far superior to the obscenely priced Lina stack. And why does it need a $10,000 dedicated clock? A $2,000 Holo Spring has a PLL chip that completely eliminates jitter. I did also try a couple of Burson amps, and thought they were excessively smoothed, almost like they were trying to be really really polite. Maybe that works with some music, but clearly not for rock and metal, which is mostly what I listen to.
I tried the Schiit Yggi/Mjolnir and was not a fan. I loved my Bifrost/Jotunheim that I used to have, but the Yggi/Mjolnir sounded too harsh, lifeless and electronic. I also thought it gave off the heat and smell of a car engine, which I have never seen from any other class A amp. I tried a Meze Empyrean 2, and it seemed decent though didn't have great soundstage or image separation, which makes me think it is overpriced, which seems to be a pattern with Meze. I tried it and some other headphones on a Chord Dave and Chord TT2, as well as the Chord Dave and M-Scaler at the Chord table. The best sounding of the three was the TT2, then the Dave, then the Dave and M-Scaler. Yes, in that order. The Dave by itself was extremely bright, no matter what headphones I used. Good dynamics and harmonies, but it had a flat wall-of-sound effect with no image separation. The TT2 was a lesser version of this, so you got much of what was good about the Dave, but without the piercing brightness and would make a Dave unlistenable for me. The Dave and M-Scaler was amazingly bad (for the price I mean, I'm sure it would be great if it was far cheaper, though I still would find it unusable), though at least not as bright as the Dave by itself. For something slower like Radiohead it was decent, but for busier music, like Interstellar's "Mountains", the whole thing fell apart into a mush that I would expect out of something super-cheap. Ultimately I found it boring, which at least didn't happen with the Dave by itself. Why someone would pay $20,000 for that boggles my mind.
To me the lesson of all this is that once you have a setup you really like, and you get to the point that it is hard to find any way to improve on it, you legitimately can't improve on it, not by much anyway, no matter what price you are willing to pay.
Was Lina stack on 2v or 6v when listening to Susvara?
Good question. I forgot I had the same initial experience with Susvara and I got help switching it and was better on 6v I think at 4-5 o'clock.
eugene2
100+ Head-Fier
Also, I thought Bloom Audio was bringing the new Burson Audio Voyager I guess not since no one mentioned it.
Also, I thought Bloom Audio was bringing the new Burson Audio Voyager I guess not since no one mentioned it.
Yes, it was but I failed to get around to it like many others.
cool, thank you for the pictures
Amazing write up and an even more amazing selection of gear on showcase at the event! It's posts like this where I wish something as extravagant as CanJam would appear in India too (although I'm sure we are getting there )
cool, thank you for the pictures
Amazing write up and an even more amazing selection of gear on showcase at the event! It's posts like this where I wish something as extravagant as CanJam would appear in India too (although I'm sure we are getting there )
Thank you both!
There are already CanJams in Singapore and Shanghai..