2019 has brought with it an expansion to the Ear Gear Expo hall at Axpona. Last year all the headphone centric products were mixed in with the speaker, vinyl and cable market place. Which often lead to excessive background noise and a disjointed flow of foot traffic between various connected vendors.
How ever this year within a more dedicated space I found there was a more focused Headphone experience for everyone! It was so much easier to strike up a conversation over genuine shared interest, and often times vendors would allow some mild mixing of brands and booths. I know I personally took quite a few headphones over to the LTA Table!
I personally really enjoyed getting a chance to have engaging conversations with a few fellow headphone fans, while there was a lot to listen to there was even more to talk about!
An for me iBasso really stole the day away, hearing their new line up of digital audio players was an absolute treat!
The response of the UI was snappy, their touch screen displays were vibrant and all intended and desired functionality was easy to use. An the functionality is really what stood out to me, as these new DAPs have numerous analog and digital input/output options. An both their Mid Range DX150 and TOTL DX 220 had interchangeable amplification stages, an while my own HM901 also has this feature it isn't any where near as polished as what iBasso has to offer.
An really... polished is the word that encompasses my experience with them today. An I personally appreciate them taking the time to polish the experience along with the audio sound quality!
I'm also happy to report I really enjoyed the 4.4 balanced Pentaconn amp Module on their DX 220, listening to it also gave me a chance to use the 4.4 Pentaconn cable I have for the Cascades. Though the icing on the cake for me was the over whelming positive reaction every one had to hearing the Cascade filter less and fully balanced on these units!
An in terms of sound quality I did find both the fully balanced DX Set ups and iBasso's own Open back headphone to be both powerful and detailed. I would really have to sit down in a quieter setting to delve more deeply into this aspect of their performance, though I'm happy to say nothing negative stood out at any time during my listen.
I also stopped by the Focal booth to give their new closed back a listen on the new Benchmark system. An after a few tracks I do feel I preferred hearing that particular headphone on a solid state system at the Benchmarks level.
Still while I continue to have a mostly positive experience with the Stellia I just don't think it's the right headphone for my preferences.
Speaking of preference, I'm happy to say Dan's new Ether2 has reset my expectation of musical. An typically I avoid musical gear, typically I assume musical gear will have excessive bloom, overemphasis on harmonics, exaggerated decay and sustain and worse of all will likely be just too warm.
Thankfully though the Ether2 isn't characterized by any of the sins committed under the banner of "musicality." An honestly musical isn't even a term I thought to apply to them rather it was something their team directed at their own headphone.
An after an extensive listening session I can appreciate what they mean by that and I do feel that Ether2 really sets the bar on how anything "musical" should sound.
Back end system here consisted of a Chord TT2 and M-Scaler fed into a LTA Z10E, overall I found the Ether2 to be musical in how effortlessly it presents a slight emphasis on harmonic content relative to fundamental spectra. It's envelope also featured some minute, but discernible, emphasis on decay.
An I use the word effortless here because it presents these characteristics in such a way that doesn't draw attention to it self. So while the emphasis is still there, it isn't presented in an overly aggressive manner rather it does so quite subtly. An this subtle elongation to harmonic content and decay within the envelope really allowed the Ether2 to present a believable sound stage. There were a number of tracks within this busy and crowed room that had me looking else where for noise, and it was only after I re listened to certain tracks that I realized the noise I was looking for outside of my head was in fact from the Ether2.
For me moving forward anything "musical" will need to match the effortlessness of Ether2's slightly sweet envelope and it's outside your head presentation and imaging. An rather than continue to foster a dislike of the term, I may start to shift my frustration with those who misuse and misrepresent the already ambiguous term.
Speaking of musical, I was thrilled to finally get to hear a ZMF Eikon with a in house ZMF Full silver cable!!! Many of you may know I always ran my own Eikon with full silver and I'm happy to say the ZMF Cable met and quite likely exceed my expectations.
While I won't beat the dead horse that is my love for proper solid silver, I will say I feel it helps tame the one issue I always had with my Eikon. Namely it's ever so slightly excessive bass, I always found my self wanting just a little less body/intensity and a little more texture and finesse which a proper full silver cable will deliver.
Plus to top it all off I got yet another chance to hear a DNA Headphone amp, these units are truly climbing up my priority list! As I just keep running into them it seems.
Dr.C of Audeze also allowed me the chance to hear a working prototype for a possible LCD 4 upgrade.
An I felt overall is really captured and presented a perfected classic Audeze House Sound. Slightly dark but fully extended and detailed top end response, slightly liquid mid range with just enough presence and tactility alongside that awesome and deep powerfully extended Audeze Planar Bass! Though given it isn't in production just yet, I won't delve to deeply into it.
Project was also present with their own little Headphone Stack! Being smaller than their competitors and wireless/network ready really just further demonstrates how much value the brand offers.
Sadly though they only had an HD800S to listen with and while I enjoyed a clean presentation with lots of headroom from this set up, I just simply don't enjoy the HD 800S. Every time I hear it I'm always distracted by how thick it is compared to my own HD800, so much so that it's difficult for me to look past this glaring fault.
Hopefully, I'll get a chance to hear this in home soon and if that happens I'll report back with more on it's performance!
Regrettably I found the new Hifiman R2R2000 to be luke warm at best. While small and light weight it's user interface was sluggish, it's volume pot slipped often and it's price far greater than it's performance. Frankly I think something like an iFi xDSD would be better or heck even Mojo x Poly if you can get it to work.
An to make matters worse I also found out that Hifiman is discontinuing it's HM900 series DAPs leaving only this and other lukewarm options.
Now hot off the press or rather bench is Cleer Audio's new Next semi open back headphone.
Praised for it's exceptional expansiveness, detail and clarity all features which I felt were all over shadowed by how undeniably over aggressive and lean it is tonally on this set up.
Thankfully the guys over at LTA had just what this headphone needs! Some proper tube hardware to help bring a more natural tonality and envelope to what really is an expansive, detailed and crystal cleer sounding headphone. An I for one can appreciate this kind of tonal presentation from a headphone, even when it's pair'd with a more aggressive envelope! Still I felt that overall the most balanced system that allow'd the Cleer Next to shine most was a tube based system rather than a solid state one. An again, thankfully the LTA guys were only a few steps away!
One of the final listens today was the RNHP Precision Headphone amp and NDH 20 closed back headphone from Neumann.
Thankfully the amplifier is exceptional, so much so I'll be driving home with one for an immediate review. However the NDH 20 was just a mess, tonally it's everything you'd want from a studio closed back but it's envelope it's plagued with unevenness and the driver is really held back by a lot of cup related reflections and resonance.
Which is a real shame given how well built the unit it and how it's frequency response is. Hopefully Neumann will revise this headphone... or sell their driver to some one who'll place in it a more properly dampened closed back chamber.
Thanks again every one for reading and please be on the look out for my day 2 impressions of which I'll leave a nice little sneak peak picture!
