LATEST ADDITIONS

Chord Electronics' new Mojo 2 portable DAC/headphone amplifier packs plenty of mojo into a small but substantial package. To my mind—and ears—it was one of this CanJam's highlights.

I'd heard Meze Audio discussed by headphone aficionados for a handful of years. So I was interested to hear some of the Romanian manufacturer’s headphones at CanJam, where Meze presented their new Elite open-back ($4000) and Liric closed-back ($2000) headphones. Both models employ an approach unusual in planar-magnetic drivers: a proprietary Isodynamic Hybrid Array that Rinaro, a Ukrainian company, created for Meze. Meze displayed a few clear-encased examples of these arrays in their demo area so that the curious (including me) could view the diaphragm’s fine, serpentine membrane conductors.

Woo Audio’s Jack Wu was in person to debut his new Woo Audio WA23 Luna amp ($9000), which he paired with Abyss's new semiopen-back Diana TC planar headphones ($4495).

Only minimal information was available on Wu’s new amp, but he revealed the following: The WA23 Luna is an single-ended triode design that can serve as a headphone amp or a preamplifier. Power ratings remain a secret, but Wu said the Luna is a high-gain, point-to-point design. It draws watts from a pair of Electro Harmonix 2A3 power tubes; also on board are two 6C45 driver tubes and a 5U4G rectifier tube. It can drive a variety of headphone designs, Wu said.

Woo Audio, makers of tube electronics, are known for designing great-sounding and great-looking amplifiers intended especially for driving headphones. At an AXPONA a few years back, I became fond of their smaller-scale products, such as their WA7 Firefly, a cube-shaped headphone amp/DAC/preamp now in its third generation.

Justin Weber's Ampsandsound was showing the Agartha ($6300), the Nautilus ($9200), and the new Red October ($12,000) tubed amplifiers.

Why do the names of some headphone brands sound like they originated with marketing flacks or PR hacks? Some brands have natural, fuzzy sounding names, others a sci-fi bent.