What lies on the other side of the registration table at a CanJam event? I got a chance to walk the halls and sit in the pre-heated seats of many listening tables. If you would like to see moving pictures rather than stills and words, check out our Facebook Reels channel or even (gulp) our TikTok channel for more. The show was, in a few words: serene, educational and familiar.
It was familiar in the way that things are slowly getting back to “normal”, whatever that might mean to you in a pre-pandemic sense. Attendance wasn’t particularly muted on Saturday and retailers and vendors were certainly making their way out into the great wide open again. Unfortunately New York natives did suffer some logistic problems due to the flooding they experienced that week. Several individual’s houses were affected by water and some flights were cancelled. Nonetheless, the cans still got jammed over the two day event at the Irvine Marriott. A collection of several side rooms and a main convention hall, there were many advancements in True Wireless technologies to be found. This of course, didn’t impede a whole host of new full sized high end options on display, but the main theme of the show appeared to revolve around musings of wireless, and trickle-down tech in the form of lower price points from traditionally luxury brands (along with some easier to drive, more mainstream adaptabilities from the drivers).
Along with the usual suspects, we also came across some high end delights in the form of Greg Baron from United Home Audio. For those that don’t know, UHA makes some pretty nice reel-to-reel devices and at CanJam SoCal 2023, they were connected to some equally nice Viva Audio tube amplification from import and distributor HighEndbyOZ. Color us surprised.
Rob Watts of Chord Electronics aways has a ton of delightful information to share during his seminars. He also joined us for our audiophile-oriented podcast The Occasional Podcast, which you can stream direct from the embed below or from your favorite podcast platform.
Axel Grell, designer of the legendary Sennheiser HD 600/650/800 has a new headphone out in partnership with DROP. You can hear more of his story on our podcast interview from last season.
Justin from ampsandsound made it out to the show with some of his stellar desktop tube amplifiers. We are also big fans of his high end speaker and speaker amplifier designs as well. Justin joined us for 5 Things To Consider Before Buying A Tube Amplifier from earlier this year.
Focal was bringing out the CanJam SoCal 2023 party wagon with this premium-for-wireless $699 full size Bathys headphone in a new color called Dune. Bathys remains somewhat of an outlier for the more typical $200-$400 range of wireless headphone options currently peppering the market.
Zach Mehrbach of ZMF Headphones had two new items on display, an easier-to-drive headphone called Bokeh ($1,100) and a new retro headphone amplifier called Arcadia ($1,110).
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