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Heh, that's me (bald head, black T-shirt) sitting down at the Headphones.com booth on the far right. I finally got to meet @GoldenSound (standing, to my left) after enjoying so many of his videos over the last few years. That was my first stop upon entering as I (finally) had a chance to hear the Bravura and Aperio (sans phone booth, unfortunately). They were having some server issues, but allowed me to plug my laptop into the GS Special Edition Wandla that was feeding the Bravura. I played a couple of upbeat tunes with potent bass in the mix, and the Bravura handled them beautifully. That was one of my issues with the original Sonoma (anemic bass), and they've clearly resolved that. The Sonoma was also too clampy for me, and the Bravura, while still snug, is far more comfortable. I concur with those who say it's a lot of headphone for the money. I didn't hear any clipping, but I did run out of gain on some other tracks I played which were mastered at lower volume. That was really my only niggle with the Bravura.
I wanted to then just move my laptop over to the GS SE Wandla feeding the Aperio for an apples-to-apples comparison, but they had the server back up and preferred that I play tracks off of that. Unfortunately, there was no Qobuz or Tidal, so I ended up playing a couple tracks (by Alt-J and Pliny) from Cameron's playlist, neither of which I was familiar with. Clearly not ideal, but I might be able to play my own tracks on the Aperio later this afternoon. TBD. In any case and under the circumstances, the Aperio didn't sound like that much of a step up from the Bravura, and certainly not something I'd pay 5x the price for!
From there, I decided to mosey around and make a general accounting of the wares on offer. The first room I entered was Mimic Audio, who had a few different Viva amps, all tubed of course. This included an estat amp (retailing for $23.5k) that wasn't even on my radar. Plugged into said amp was a Shangri-la Sr., with a STAX X9000 waiting off to the side. As an added bonus, all this was being fed by the variable volume version of my own DAC, the EMM Labs DV2 V2, with an Aurender something-or-another in front of that. I listened to a couple of tracks on both the Shang and X9000, and those cans sounded roughly on par on that system, both hugely resolving, but maybe not the absolute best I've heard them (although close). Unfortunately, I had no way to add a bass shelf.
Across the room were a couple of Viva amps for standard cans. The flagship amp was occupied, so I down at the "budget" model, which is still rather large and imposing. I will try to report prices and model numbers later if someone hasn't in the meantime. This amp was being fed by the Meitner MA3, which is the baby brother of the EMM Labs DV2 V2, with integrated streamer, and at a far lower cost. There were four headphones available: Caldera Closed, Atrium Closed, Valkyria, Diana MR. The CC was plugged in already, so I started there. In a word, fabulous! The midrange peakiness I heard on the Caldera (open) was nowhere in evidence. The staging was also very open for a closed-back can. I'm quite looking forward to following up with this headphone. I then moved on to the Valkyria. It looks better in hand than in photos, but I'm still not in love with the aesthetics. Unfortunately, I also didn't find the headphone particularly comfortable, but maybe I just needed to adjust it more. The sound was good, but on first blush, I preferred the Caldera Closed. I was listening to modern electronic pop (These Chains by Hot Chip), which is probably not the sweet spot for the Valkyria. I'll feed it some classical when I revisit it later in the show. Finally, I tried the Diana MR. Easily the most comfortable headphone I've ever worn from Abyss, and I really liked the tuning as well! Definitely a headphone I plan to re-audition at some point this weekend.
I wanted to try the Atrium Closed, but @chrisnyc75 had been waiting to listen for several minutes, and so I yielded the seat. It was great to meet him, and we briefly discussed our limited impressions so far.
Right next door to Mimic was the ZMF room, which was predictably already fairly packed. I'm planning to postpone my auditioning time there until Sunday morning, when the crowd is typically most sparse, but my Susvara stock pads have noticeably chipped away along the edges, and ZMF just released Susvara replacement pads, which fortuitously are available at the show. I introduced myself to Zach (who comes across, to me, as more of a Zen master in person than on video), told him I wanted whichever of the two pad options sounded closest to stock, and he handed me some perforated lambskin, told me to install them on my Susvara at my leisure, and see if they worked for me. After surveying the rest of the exhibits without listening to anything, I headed back up to my hotel room to do the pad switch. I've been listening to the Susvara with the ZMF pads while typing all of this, and they do indeed sound quite similar to the stock pads. Bass may be ever-so-slightly diminished, which is rarely a good thing in my book, so I plan to try the other ZMF variant before finalizing the purchase. Will update later.
Anyway, this is the definitely the most insane CanJam I've yet attended, by quite a margin!! Time for a quick nosh, and then down to hear the HE-1 at 2pm. Later.......
