Welcome back to my coverage of CanJam NYC 2025, my first CanJam NYC. Again I would personally like to thank our good friends at HIFIMAN for sponsoring our coverage, without the support of manufacturers like HIFIMAN who put their all into the Personal Audio community, magazines like ours and shows like CanJam would not be possible.
DEKONI AUDIO
DEKONI AUDIO had a heavy focus on their new DEKONI AUDIO ESEMBLE CABLES employing DEKONI AUDIO’s unusual DEKONI Modular Cable System Technology (
) which allows for a mix and match configuration allowing you to purchase the appropriate connections for your specific needs on a product by product basis for the ultimate in interchangeability. They announced a fairly extensive expansion of the line to accommodate a greater range of sources and headphones. Of course they also had a large selection of headphones to demonstrate their vast line of amazing replacement ear pads, offering improvements in both comfort and sound quality.
beyerdynamic
beyerdynamic was offering demos of their new reimagined versions of their extremely popular classic studio quality headphones, the beyerdynamic DT 1770 PRO MK II Closed – Back Dynamic Headphone ($599.99) and beyerdynamic DT 1990 PRO MK II Open – Back Dynamic Headphone ($599.99).
AUDEZE
As always, AUDEZE required a large space to present their extensive catalog of headphones with a huge variety of sources including their amazing AUDEZE LCD-5 Flagship Planar Magnetic Headphones ($4,500) with the amazing state of the art dCS LINA System ($31,150), consisting of an independent Ring DAC, Master Clock, and Headphone Amplifier. But the highlight of the show was their newly updated AUDEZE CRBN2 Electrostatic Headphone ($5,995), without question the finest sounding product to come from the AUDEZE brand, and the single most improvement in a headphone I have heard.
HIGH END by OZ
HIGH END by OZ had the most impressive demonstration of the show with their $120,000 Viva Headphone Amplifier, this two-piece system, power supply on the left and amp on the right, able to power both conventional and electrostatic headphones, has reset the bar for rare air personal audio. The sound was simply spectacular.
Forté Distribution
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.
AZLA
As many longtime readers probably know, I have always had a real problem getting a seal with Universal IEMs, so newcomer AZLA caught me by surprise with their SednaEarfit XELASTEC II temperature sensitive ear tips ($19). Though they were a bit of a challenge to put on my Noble Viking Ragnars, they offered an instantaneous seal.
Woodland Creation Limited
Another newcomer, Woodland Creation Limited, were showing a new Flagship IEM, the Hercules Audio MOSES ($4,199), which was an excellent performer though a bit midrange heavy.
CrinEar
CrinEar is a brand new IEM company created by YouTube influencer Crinacle. He was showing a large assortment of IEMs along with the prototypes of his three new CrinEar models; the CrinEar Project Daybreak, the CrinEar Project Meta, and the CrinEar Project Reference, which as prototypes, have not yet been priced. To be honest, he was talking to a fan during the whole time, so I did not learn this at the time, hence I only photographed the Project Daybreak, though apparently he voiced several inexpensive IEMs for 7Hz (under $30). The CrinEar Project Daybreak was the IEM I was asked to listen to and felt it had excellent performance and build quality for what I was led to understand would be a fairly inexpensive IEM.
ICE LAB
My last stop was at ICE LAB, who impressed me due to being one of the only IEM manufacturers I have come across who focused on the quality of their crossover components, insisting on only independently matched audiophile grade parts such as ELNA capacitors, TRW resistors and DALE resistors. The model I auditioned was their flagship ICE LAB SPECTRUMICA Dual-Conduction IEM ($1,999) which boasts a Dynamic Bone Conduction Driver, Sonion’s Dual Electrostatic Driver, a Powerful Ceramic Dynamic Driver, their Exclusive P-Sync Phase-Synchronized Chamber, ELETECH Signature Baroque Tips, and a “MICA” signature earphone cable, along with Gold Plated Silver + OCC Internal wiring and the aforementioned audiophile-grade components.
That concludes my coverage of CanJam NYC 2025, once again I would personally like to thank our good friends at HIFIMAN for sponsoring this coverage.
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