Thank you for returning for part 3 of my CanJam SoCal 2025 coverage. I would like to extend special thanks to Noble Audio for making this coverage possible, not only do they make incredible IEMs and now Headphones, they have always been a great supporter of the Personal Audio community in general, often sponsoring our coverage of these events.
THE SOURCE AUDIO VIDEO DESIGN GROUP
Dating back to the first CanJam SoCal in 2016, which also demarcated the beginning of my time with Headphone.Guru, Jason Lord, and The Source Audio Video Design Group have been a regular at CanJam SoCal. In my experience, he was the first High-End audio dealer who really got it and was willing to embrace the Personal Audio community, dedicating a whole showroom to Personal Audio products. This year, like last year, Jason also hosted a live video podcast interviewing personalities of the Personal Audio world. On display were a plethora of top brands and unique products too lengthy to cover here, but one standout was the Audma Maestro HPA1 DAC/Headphone Amplifier ($9,600) featuring its unique ELISA circuit, which gives the listener full control of the soundstage.
WARWICK ACOUTICS
Once again, WARWICK ACOUSTICS was showing off their WARWICK ACOUSTICS APERIO GoldenSound SIGNATURE Electrostatic Headphone System ($38,000) voiced by Cameron Oatley (GoldenSound) alongside a standard WARWICK ACOUSTICS APERIO ($40,000 for the limited Black Edition, $35,000 for silver) to allow for A/B listening in their signature isolation booth.
LINEAR TUBE AUDIO
Always a favorite, Linear Tube Audio (LTA) was on hand with their phenomenal patented ZOTL amplifiers. Of special interest to me was the LTA Z10e Electrostatic Headphone Amp / Integrated Amp ($6,950), being a huge fan of Electrostatic Headphones. They were also demonstrating a prototype SJY headphone (model and price TBA), which promises to be an interesting future development.
ēcoute
One of the more interesting finds at AXPONA 2025 was écoute, who have developed a vacuum tube amp based wireless headphone. The écoute audio TH1 Vacuum Tube Headphone ($799) features a 40mm titanium-coated mylar driver, ANC, and dual mono vacuum tube amplifiers, and supports Bluetooth 5.3 for the LDAC codec as well as USB-C digital and 3.5mm TRS analog inputs with up to 20 hours of wireless playback time. And in another surprise, the day before CanJam SoCal2025, Andy Reagan announced that he had moved from his position as president of Dan Clark Audio to be president of écoute to help launch this groundbreaking product into the U.S. market, I see great things in their future.
Forté
Forté Distribution had a couple of exciting products on display the Luxsin Audio X9 DAC/Headphone Amp (TBA) which has the unique feature that it can adjust 2,500 different headphones to match the Harmon Curve, the Eversolo DMP-A6 Master Edition Gen 2 Music Streamer ($1,299), and the Shanling HW600 Planar Headphones ($1099) which sounded surprisingly good for a first time effort.
ampsandsound
It is always a great pleasure to meet up with Justin Webber, the designing genius behind ampsandsound, as he is one of my favorite tube amp manufacturers, and this time I got the rare opportunity to meet his daughter, who was helping him man the booth. They were demonstrating the fantastic ampsandsound Nautilus XL SE Tube Integrated Amplifier ($18,000), and the ampsandsound Nautilus ($12,000), along with a custom modified ANK Tube DAC (this item is not listed on their website, so it might be for personal use only).
So that wraps up part 3 of my coverage of CanJam SoCal 2025, thanks to Noble Audio for providing sponsorship. Stay tuned for part 4.
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