Canjam London 2015

[episiarch]

My full impressions (and everybody else's) are over at that other place, but here are my short takeaways, in case anyone's interested.

• Mr Speakers Ether C is great.  Different people rate it differently compared to HD800, Ether (open), etc., etc., but I didn't speak to anyone who wasn't impressed by it.  Personally I could have spent all weekend listening on these (at the Schiit table with their multibit DACs and Mjolnir 2)
• Chord Hugo is a real winner.  It's not just another semiportable DAC/amp (there's very different stuff going on inside), and the difference is really audible.  There is a tabletop Hugo now too, but I didn't listen to it (there's a higher end one in the pipeline, named Dave). 
• The Questyle DAP is really good.  I'm not an AK owner, but it seemed like the people with lots of AK experience were really impressed by the Questyle's sound.
• Pendulumic Stance S1+ (I think that's the model name) Bluetooth full-sized closed headphone sounds great (obviously with the caveat it's Bluetooth).  Has a nifty little twistable volume knob, and weighs noticeably less than my AKG K845BT.  A winner if you want a Bluetooth headphone of this kind.
• Those super thin Linum cables for IEMs are for realz and they sounded great to me.
• ACS' new lineup (Evoke < Evolve < Encore) sounds fantastic, ships with Linum cables, comes universal or custom, and is really nicely priced.  Evoke is supposedly really close to the old T2 (which I never heard), and it goes up from there.
• Audioquest Nighthawk sounded good to me but I didn't hear anything special distinguishing it from other higher-end dynamics.  (Admittedly I was pretty listened-out by the time I got to these on Sunday afternoon.)
• None of you will be surprised to hear that the HE-1000 was at several stations at the show and that everyone I spoke to loved them best out of the GS-X (seriously, I heard that a lot).  BHSE + 007 and 009 got the expected raves as well.
• I'm pretty sure that the museum-quality Orpheus I spent a little time on is the one that was stolen in Berlin yesterday.  Fuck.

 

Edited September 2, 2015 by episiarch