CanJam NYC 2022

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).

The WA23 Luna is a 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.

Encased in aluminum and finished in black with gold accents, the 40lb Luna and its linear power supply looked fantastic. By design, the large, gold-tinted Alps RK50 volume potentiometer is visible through the chassis. Below the volume control, three small buttons regulate the choice of preamp or headphone amp, high or low impedance, and high or low gain. A fourth, three-position button switches among three inputs, two RCA and one XLR.

Built in Long Island City, New York (once home to Fisher and other hi-fi brands), the WA23 Luna has classic visual appeal, not least because of its two prominent Coke-bottle 2A3s tubes.

The Abyss Diana TC headphones also possess classic visual appeal. To this reporter's eyes, they resemble '70s-era Quad gear, from the muted color and understated design to its meshy European leather headband—"with soft Alcantara," the website says—and rounded cups with "high-tech ceramic polymer finish." It comes with a 1.5m JPS Labs cable.

The Diana TC is specified at 69 ohms nominal impedance and 90dB/mW sensitivity. Its 63mm planar drivers are complemented by a spiffy outer-cup design: A "Fibonacci side hole pattern enhanced for the new TC speaker driver properly tunes the sound while following the flow of nature," notes the website.

On Radiohead's "Burn the Witch," via the Woo/Abyss pair, the sound was enormous. Thom Yorke and Co wrapped around my cranium on an open, clean, immersive soundstage. I was tempted to buy, borrow, or steal the show samples, but a cooler head prevailed.