As you may have noticed from my comments on day 1 at
SoCoal CanJam, the first day was busy so I could not talk to many industry people. For some reason I thought today would be worse but it was the exact opposite. There were maybe 30% of the number of people on day one. This made the day hugely more fruitful for me in networking, chatting with companies, etc. Some will be reflected in the trip report. Others will reveal themselves in the future.
Anyway, my initial mission was to hit the suites that were too busy the first day. And that started with Woo Audio's table, starting with this GES Electrostatic tube amplifier:
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It sounded good but like my Stax tube headphone amp, can't play super loud.
The next product was the WA11 Topaz which is a portable DAC and headphone amplifier:
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It sounded good until I just checked its price: US $1,399! Oh, please.
These SONY IEMs sounded good. Anyone can ID the model?
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For the third-time, I saw someone leaving the last played music as Adele:
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She is an amazing singer. But his recordings are horrible. Her live videos actually sound better. Why on earth some would play them to test headphones is beyond me.
Next was the mysphere 3 headphones:
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At first I thought they go on like Raal headphones and go on backward. Then a guy came over and tapped on my shoulder saying I had them on backward. Alas, they didn't sound that good to me either way. The Raal is a much better "speaker hanging from your ear" emulation. Considering that these go for US $4,000, I am not sure who is in the market for them.
Headphone maker Meze was sharing the same room and had these Cayin portable players as source. They had a super matte display which was hard to see if my memory is right:
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You can see the fuzziness in the picture above.
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I started with the Classic 99 units which looked nice but I did not walk away with a memorable experience:
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They had this science-fiction looking WA33 on a table by itself:
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It goes for a cool US $8,000. How does it sound? Well, a very helpful young person was sitting next to me at the table and told me how great the headphones I was holding sounded. Alas, he was monopolizing the touch-screen player on the right and despite me sitting there spinning my wheels for 5+ minutes, never offered to let me hear something! Grrrr....
These were the massive headphones that I was going to use with them: Abyss AB-1266 PHI TC
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They were super heavy and uncomfortable for me.
This was the other headphone there that I could not hear:
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