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CanJam NYC 2023: February 25-26


Voltron

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Shelly, Marc, Claire and I had a great time at the Village Vanguard seeing John Zorn's quartet with Julian Lage. Great stuff. 

Sorry that our Travel Team time has again come to the end, but I am really glad we're getting the band back together! Next time we need even more participation.

This place is right next to our hotel. I'm thinking I need to get some dumplings to keep the streak going...😁

519CC7F3-4C6D-4338-8D05-F41328B2D78B.jpeg

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Boy, the hf peeps are sure waxxing on and on about that Viva amp in the CJ meet thread (or amps, the stat one too). Hadn't heard of them (or remembered), but then ran across a thread here with Kevin and Birgir dissing it for the usual types or reasons (ala Rudistor or Mikhail). Nice Alps pot. All of this for $17K? SIgn me up!

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I only listened to the Viva electrostat amp with the X9000s and after going between Kerry's T2, a BHSE and the Grand Cayman, the Viva just felt... sad. Within 10 seconds I knew it was not doing a good job, just sounded kind of weak and laid back in a bad way.

Plus, a $17K amp using the same shitty plastic sockets you can buy for 20 cents while paying extra to have the screws holding the thing together engraved with the brand name? Seriously not impressed.

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It needs more mil-spec gold anodizing...  😉  I tried to listen to the Viva a few times but it was always occupied.  The fact that they use Rifa caps for coupling, the same type which is notorious for failing short as X and Y caps in PSU's... yeah this is not a good thing. 

It was awesome seeing everyone and totally worth it for landing back home this morning running on 23 hours with no sleep.  :) 

I didn't try a whole lot of stuff other than the DCA headphones and I tried the Hifiman Shangri-La too out of the Headamp amps.  What a fucking waste of time that thing was, did a direct comparison against the Audeze CRBN and it failed in ever regard, didn't do a single thing better than the CRBN's.  It is vague sounding with no real impact and being Hifiman... built like absolute shit. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/1/2023 at 8:16 AM, spritzer said:

It needs more mil-spec gold anodizing...  😉  I tried to listen to the Viva a few times but it was always occupied.  The fact that they use Rifa caps for coupling, the same type which is notorious for failing short as X and Y caps in PSU's... yeah this is not a good thing. 

It was awesome seeing everyone and totally worth it for landing back home this morning running on 23 hours with no sleep.  :) 

I didn't try a whole lot of stuff other than the DCA headphones and I tried the Hifiman Shangri-La too out of the Headamp amps.  What a fucking waste of time that thing was, did a direct comparison against the Audeze CRBN and it failed in ever regard, didn't do a single thing better than the CRBN's.  It is vague sounding with no real impact and being Hifiman... built like absolute shit. 

What do you think of Grand Cayman?

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I only spent a few minutes with it using the new DCA and Shangri-la SR with an unfamiliar source so I can't really comment on it.  No issues I could hear but I'd need to spend some more time with it.  It's an impressive beast though.  :)  

I forgot to mention I also tried the Warwick Audio Bravura... what a piece of shit that is.  Now the amp was broken so no high gain mode available so I couldn't push the volume far enough.  Still it is the blandest sound imaginable, it does nothing well and you can clearly hear the DSP doing its best to try and fix the sound of the single ended transducers.  I suspect this will be far worse when the volume is pushed to normal levels. 

I actually have a couple of the Sonoma M1 headphones (dirt cheap now) and was planning on designing an amp for them (the Bravura uses the same amp) but I might not bother.  They clearly can't work with a direct signal so my plan is to just reuse the housings and design proper electrostatic drivers that fit in there. 

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