Blog: Canjam London 2017 – Part 1

Audeze

Who doesn’t love Audeze?! They’re back stronger than ever with a new series of excellent sounding headphones and inears. Call me a fan.

The iSines of course were very popular at the show and I’m very impressed with the iSine 20 and the i4 myself.

The Audeze LCD-XC still is one of my all-time favourite closed headphones. Yes it is rather heavy but the depth and layering this headphone has is incredible. These last few years you mainly saw Audeze headphones at the different booths at the big shows, but this year Audeze is getting the company of the Focal Utopia

The LCD-4 still remains Audeze’s reference model. Personally I however slightly prefer the LCD-3 and the Utopia over it.

The Deckard certainly isn’t a bad amplifier but I think we can all agree that it’s not one of Audeze’s most popular units. To me their line of inears and headphones still is a lot more impressive.

AudioQuest

The NightHawk, NightOwl and the excellent value DragonFly units aren’t the newest and we’ve covered all of them already on HFN.

As usual their headphones were being powered by the DragonFly and the Violectric V281. Skylar, the creator of the Hawks who sadly recently left AQ, is a big fan of the V281 and so logically he used it to tune the Hawks. Do try listening to the NightOwl and V281 combo in balanced mode if you ever get the chance.

The news of the show however was the release of the AudioQuest Beetle. Unfortunately they couldn’t show it at the show just yet, but we’ll be featuring it soon on HFN! Do keep an eye on AQ over the next coming months tough, as they’ve got something new planned for all of us…

Auris Audio

The Serbian company hasn’t been around that long yet but we certainly put them on the map when we reviewed the really good HA2-SE tube amp (on the left). It’s my favourite amplifier for a whole lot of headphones and it’s my preferred amp for the Focal Utopia.

Just like in Munich, Auris was also showing their newest $/€6K tube amp called the Headonia. The Headonia (on the right) is completely different from the HA2-SE and if you listened to it at the show you’ll know why this is their reference headphone amplifier. Pre-orders have started, in case you’re interested already. I’m not the biggest fan of the Hifiman Susvara, but I do like it most on the Headonia.

B&W

It’s been a while since we featured the B&W headphones on Headfonia and that’s not because they don’t sound good but rather cause we just haven’t got the time to cover them all. At the same time their seems to be less marketing activity around the brand as well which is too bad as they have some great looking and sounding headphones.

Beyerdynamic

Beyer’s booth is always one of the first ones I go to, simply because I love the Beyer tuning (except for the DT880 and T1)

Beyerdynamic especially brought the PRO models to the show such as the DT1770, 1990PRO and our favourite DT770PRO. Yet a lot of people prefer the warmer and smoother tuned Amiron more. Me? I like all of them. The thing is the PRO series are meant to be used in pro audio, so their tuning simply is very different from the consumer line.

The Amiron is easy to drive and it in my case I mostly use it as the headphone to watch movies with on my laptop when the wife is watching Netflix.

Cardas Audio

While most people know Cardas as the cable maker, they actually also have an excellent sounding IEM, the A8.

It was the first time I listened to the A8 – 30th anniversary edition – but my ears liked it a lot! Fingers crossed Berkhan will be able to get it for review.

It continues on Page three with Chord Electronics and many more, right after the click here or the jump below

4.9/5 - (121 votes)
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Lieven is living in Europe and he's the leader of the gang. He's running Headfonia as a side project next to his full time day job in Digital Marketing & Consultancy. He's a big fan of tube amps and custom inear monitors and has published hundreds of product reviews over the years.

7 Comments

  • Reply July 25, 2017

    tronco

    Thank you Lieven, nice report!

  • Reply July 28, 2017

    Lidson

    Lieven you could get the 1 More H1707 a review.

  • Reply August 2, 2017

    AUdiodiplomat

    Overall, an excellent and detailed report with good pix, reflecting my own good impressions. However, there seem to be some omissions: nothing on “Advanced”, and the “Echobox” report was ultra-skimpy. It would have been nice to see at least a SQ and operational assessment of the Explorer, and mention of their prototype planar cans. I thought the Kennertin on the ears $60 jobbie was excellent, so an assessment amplification would have been appreciated here. Btw “Snuggs” has but one g!!

  • Reply August 2, 2017

    Audiodiplomat

    A couple of predictive errors and mistypes above : omit “amplification” and it’s “Kennerton” of course!

  • Reply August 3, 2017

    henry harmon jr.

    what, no Sennheiser?

    • Reply August 3, 2017

      Lieven

      It’s in part 2. You did see Part 2 right? It’s only mentioned like a couple of times

  • Reply August 20, 2017

    Sp12er

    I did see more Sony DAPs taking the scene quite a bit in recent Head-Fi’s posts , I don’t know maybe they really do something right with the Signature Series to get an increase in popularity after all?

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