Blog: Canjam London 2017 – Part 1

This week’s blog post is all about the Canjam London 2017 show. To check out previous show reports click HERE.

 

Canjam London 2017

My first London show and what a show it was! The Head-Fi team chose a great location and the hotel was extremely good. The only downside I can think of was the lack of natural light in the Canjam ballroom as you’ll see in the pictures, so sorry for that now already.

Why I liked the show so much? Easy. It is one of the first shows where the atmosphere was this chill and were everyone was so easygoing and friendly. Everybody got along fine and exhibitors were exchanging gear from booth to booth. The 15000 square feet room was setup in a way that you always had enough space to freely walk around without bumping in to anyone. You could even to take a five minute rest in the white leather couches aka the chill area.

What I personally liked was the fact that a lot of the exhibitors were not distributors or re-sellers but the actual audio companies from all over the world. As a review site that certainly helps to establish a better relationship with the brands and the owners, so Ethan, Joe and the Head-Fi team did a great job there. It also was the first time this many HFN readers and Head-Fiers walked up to me just to say hi, to ask me a couple of questions on the gear they were planning to buy or to ask me if I had any other recommendations for them.

In short: I had a great time and stay in London with lots of audio friends from all over the world. Will I be back for London 2018? Oh yes, definitely. I also liked seeing the HFN logo (as a sponsor) on the posters at the show.  It looked good! (see the article picture)

As usual this will be a picture report with comments on the company or gear in the picture. As there are so many pictures, the report will be split up in two articles, over several pages. If there any questions, the comments section is all yours. Enjoy!

London

The Big Ben. Basically you got this awesome view from the hotel lobby and the breakfast area. It wasn’t my first time in London and it surely won’t be my last. London has this magical attraction that makes you want to come back, and why not do so when there’s a Head-Fi Canjam show? Double pleasure!

The ballroom the show was held in was rather dark but it did make the projection of the Canjam London logo on the wall extra special.

1More

1More of course isn’t a new brand and we have featured them on Headfonia before.

My interest particularly went to the H1707 full sized headphone the bears were wearing. And straight from my AK SP1000 they sounded quite nice.

Of course most of the people were listening to their universal dual, triple and quad driver IEMs, leaving their table in a bit of a mess.

64Audio

We just recently interviewed 64Audio’s CEO on HFN but unfortunately the 64 family wasn’t at the show as they were being represented.

Their booth was always very crowded as everyone absolutely wanted to hear 64Audio’s Tia and U18 TOTL IEMS

Of course all 64’s other models were available for audition as well. We’re working out something with 64 Audio to review one of their new models on HFN, so do keep an eye on that 😉

Astell & Kern

Compared to the High End show in Munich, the Korean Astell&Kern wasn’t as much represented. AK only “does” a few shows a year on their own while the more local shows are attended by local representatives. At Canjam London AK shared a booth with Audeze and Chord Electronics and logically that means it was a very popular and heavily visited booth.

Everyone of course wanted to get to listen to the A&Ultimate SP1000, the new TOTL DAP from AK. Surprisingly most of the DAPs used at the show this year weren’t AK DAPs, but Sony’s…

It’s also one of the first shows were I really saw people bringing Pelican boxes full of gear to the show to audition the new stuff with their own IEMs and DAPs

Astell&Kern was mostly interested in showing off the new SP1000, the battery king KANN and the 2016 award winning AK70. I myself use the SP1000 and AK380 at hoe while the AK70 is my on-the-go DAP most of the time when I’m not reviewing.

AKG

AKG and JBL were also at the show but to me it seemed their booth was one of the less visited ones. I have to admit I didn’t spend a lot of time there myself, as I’m not that much in to the recent AKG tuning.

It continues on Page two with Audeze and many other, right after the click here or the jump below

4.9/5 - (121 votes)
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin

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?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.