Blog: Canjam London 2017 – Part 1

Chord Electronics

Ever since Chord entered the portable market with the Hugo and later the Mojo units, they quickly became one of the most talked about brands. We even interviewed John Franks, Chord’s CEO just last Sunday.

Chord’s DAVE DAC/AMP sounds absolutely divine but it of course isn’t portable and it’s quite expensive for that matter. The closest you’ll get to the Dave performance wise in a portable package is the new Hugo 2, and it’s more affordable at the same time.

The Hugo 2 of course will soon be featured on Headfonia but as I’ve had it for several weeks already, I myself was mostly interested in the Poly add-on for their Mojo unit.

It was the first time I played with the Mojo/Poly combination and it sounded very good with my Warbler Prelude ciems. The only downside to this whole system is that you still need to connect to a smartphone or tablet over Wifi to control Poly and switch songs.

CMB Audio (Polymagnet)

CMB stands for Correlated Magnetics Research and Jude talked about this company a lot in his latest video. CMB basically are magnet experts and they in the past have worked for other speaker and headphone companies. Now they decided it was about time to develop their own headphone, the CMR 2625, with a very new magnet technology.

The concept behind the driver is to minimize distortion and to deliver a fatigue free listening experience using a precision matched dual driver. I have to say the CMR 2625 sounded very pleasant and easy on the ears while delivering all the detail with a full bodied sound and smooth delivery. More info on the headphone can be found on the CMR site.

If you still don’t know what I’m talking about but you did watch Jude’s Canjam London video, this might help to trigger your memory

The finished river and headphones will look like this

The headphone isn’t the lightest however and if I remember well it weighs about 400g. At the same time the head band and pads are very comfortable. This show unit had a rather camping force but CMR was planning on reducing it before going into production. Keep an eye out for this headphone, a lot of people will really like its sound and its fatigue free character.

For some reason the looks remind me a little of the OPPO PM3, but that might just be me.

Comply Foam, Dita Audio, Dunu

I’m a fan of Comply Foam and I use them on several of my universal monitors. A lot of people at the show seemed to do so as well

Nathan has been the one reviewing the DITA earphones on HFN so I was glad to finally be able to listen to them myself.

Of course the always popular DUNU was present at the show with several of their models. We’ll get to the Oriveti units in the picture later. (It continues on Page four with EchoBox and so much more, right after the click here or the jump below)

It continues on Page four with EchoBox and so much 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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