This was a really good CanJam for me! I had a chance to listen to most of what I hoped to, and so much of it was really great. I'll try to give impressions on things others haven't covered so much:
Statement of personal taste: I'm on the neutrality side of things. Of the things I own, my current "reference" sound is Etymotic ER4-SR. In full-sized, my main/preferred cans are AKG 702, and AKG K550 when corrected with Sonarworks' True-Fi.
In no particular order:
Audeze Mobius
I had some listening time on both the music rig and the cinema rig. What you're hearing from all other reviewers is true: these are really super good in both settings. A few things I didn't know before I tried them:
Music with head tracking: changes the sound signature from a "yep, I'm wearing good headphones" experience to more of a speakers-in-a-room experience. Really cool! And really well-done and good-sounding. For some material I might choose one, for some the other.
Weight and comfort: they aren't particularly light, but they are completely comfortable. Nooo problem.
Noise isolation: these are closed, but they're not noise canceling nor super isolating. When the CanJam hall was pretty empty they were fine, but when I listened later at a busier time, I really did have to turn up the volume.
My opinion: Mobius is good enough for music that it deserves to be the default choice for someone starting out who wants a really good "first headphone" in this price range. It sounds very good and doesn't require amps, DACs, or dongles. Just as a headphone it delivers so much value at its price point that you can think of head tracking mode, gaming, headset, and cinema as amazing value-adds that you get for free. Awesome. But sadly not enough isolation for me to recommend them in an open-office (or coworking space) setting.
Periodic Audio
I just love the Periodic offerings. I own the
Mg and
Be, and they're in very regular rotation. At the show I got to listen to the
Ti, which is a lot of fun, and the new, not yet available
C, about which more in a second.
But here's the thing: my preferred sound signature is a nice flat close-to-reference curve, as exemplified by my love for Etymotics. (Most of them; I actually don't like the reference-ish but bass-lifted ER-4P or ER4-XR. That's how much of a reference-head I am.) And Periodic makes kinda bassy earphones. But I love them! As much oomph as they have down low, they still have fantastic clarity and nothing missing all through the spectrum.
So Periodic makes kinda bassy earphones that even an Ety-head can love.
And they are super affordable, especially the $100 Mg which is the one I most often turn to anyway. This makes Periodic Mg the earphone I always recommend to coworkers and friends who want an upgrade from whatever cheap thing they have, and to whom a few hundred bucks is too much. You absolutely can't go wrong with it. It has the fun, and it has the clarity, and it doesn't cost a lot, and it has a 5-year warranty which includes cable problems. Awesome. (And even awesomer if you go to Periodic's site and buy a "Blemished" version at a reduced price. My Mg and Be are both Blemished, and it took reading glasses and a really strong light before I could even find anything that
might have been the blemish. Your blemish may vary, of course.)
Back to the new unit, Periodic Audio
C for Carbon. Dan encouraged me to listen to it before he told me anything about it, and I did. Friends, this earphone is like sinking into a big soft leather armchair that is so soft and comfortable that all the tension leaves your body and you just don't want to move. Layers and layers of smooth clean bass, again without sacrificing mids or any clarity up top, but the bass really dominates.
So what is it? For this earphone's diaphragm, Dan has grown a layer of industrial diamond on a light substrate. It's incredibly rigid, so it approaches ideal pistonic motion with less of the flexing you see in other materials. But this diaphragm has more mass than in Periodic's other drivers, and it resonates longer — the driver doesn't come to a stop as quickly when the signal stops. So you get a little bit of extra sustain on those low, long-excursion bass notes, and it's a little like being in a big room whose acoustics make all the low notes extra luscious.
Bassy and smooth, the C is so very, very much not my regular preferred sound — yet I kept coming back for more. I'm going to wind up buying one of these.
Meze Rai Penta
This is really good! I wasn't really getting an ideal fit, but I was really impressed. To me, there was just nothing missing or wrong-sounding in the presentation, and for my tastes that's pretty rare until you get up into silly money and/or numbers of drivers. What surprised me was how differently it was tuned from the Classic, which doesn't have the treble extension I like. Rai Penta does, and is good everywhere else too.
HifiMan Sundara
This is just superb. Sounds fantastic, top to bottom. Everything in its place, nothing is too prominent or too strident, and nothing is too rolled off. I loved it. They've absolutely nailed comfort. Looks great too. Yes, you can pay more and get more, but everything I heard from these made me feel I didn't
need more. What a headphone.
I would have liked to compare the new Ananda, but it was always busy.
Stealth Sonics
These are people to watch! I agree with all the good things
@Skywatcher said earlier, so I won't bother to repeat them. (But it's very clear that they are very serious about doing the science quite meticulously, and the sonic results are impressive.)
I'll add that I was particularly interested in their customs, and what they had to say about them: they are all built to a second-bend impression, which a) lets them bypass some resonances between the first and second bends, and b) lets them customise the tuning to the individual's own anatomy since they know pretty well what the chamber size will be between that second bend and the eardrum. I
really wanted to take advantage of the show special and order some customs then and there. But even though Stealth's prices are very very reasonable compared to many of the high-end customs these days, I'm just not making those expenditures right now. But I'll be thinking about it between now and CanJam next year.
Schiit Lyr 3 with Multibit DAC
Sooo sweet sounding, and very very clean and clear. If I were starting a new desktop system from scratch on a $1300 budget, I'd choose Sundara + Lyr 3 Multibit and boom, all done.
Shanling M0
A surprisingly good micro-DAP at the size and at the price. I found it very satisfactory with the various IEMs I had in my pockets. That said, it's certainly not at the level of their M3s which is about 3x the size and still small enough for my purposes.
AKG
I tried the
n5005, their new IEM with Harman Reference tuning. I found it really lovely sounding, and it's clear the Harman curve and I get along very well. I had trouble getting a really good fit though.
I also tried the
n60nc wireless, which is by no means new but which I hadn't paid attention to before, and I think it's worth summarising a little bit:
- Noise cancelling: much better than expected. Many headphones claim noise canceling but do the job only just enough to tick that checkbox. The n60nc is much better, reducing the by then very substantial CanJam crowd background to a very manageable murmur. It doesn't match the supernatural quiet of the Sony 1000X, but it was really very good, and I think similar to the canceling of the Sony H900N. Disclaimer: happily CanJam was not subject to any road traffic, piledrivers or other construction sounds, or located inside an aeroplane or a carriage on the London Underground, so unhappily I was not able to test the n60nc in these situations. But its success with ambient conversational noise is enough to make it a very good candidate as an office headphone.
- Sound: it absolutely shares the AKG sound and tuning that I like in the K702 and K550. Compared to Sony's bluetooth noise cancellers, I think the n60nc is a huge step up in sound quality. For me a bonus is that it's supported by SonarWorks True-Fi, so I expect to be able to improve its sound a little more beyond its already very satisfactory level.
- Form factor and comfort: it's a reasonably compact on-ear, with nice soft pads. Comfort was just fine, and it didn't require unpleasant pressure to stay on or cancel noise. Folds up to not take up much backpack/purse/briefcase space. The smaller earcups help it be a lot more "neckable" when not in use than larger units are.
The n60nc wireless ticked a lot of boxes for me, and I'm buying one.
Shure KSE 1200
My experience reflected everything you've heard elsewhere: these are fantastic. And they have the detail retrieval to give me that "I'm hearing things in this track that I've never heard before" experience which I don't have that much any more. Completely amazing when you consider how many other ToTL IEMs cost much more.
It's a pity Shure didn't have a higher-end source at the booth to show these off. I listened off my M3s (which is quite good, but it's not high-end), and I would have liked to hear what it could do with something more upscale.