Gramophone Dreams

ZMF
At the end of the day Saturday, I met up with my peeps in ZMF's large double room, where a young woman in stylish black-and-white checkered pants was gathering up 121 tagged-and-numbered ZMF headphones that had been set out for attendee listening. Each of the large room's tables featured at least one DAC and two headphone amplifiers. That's a lot of wires and metal boxes and people shuffling about playing musical chairs, listening to their own choices of music. ZMF was giving head-fi aficionados access to their complete product lineup, as well as diverse products from other manufacturers. Zach Mehrbach, ZMF's charismatic founder, owner, and chief designer, said, "I think we had around 16 tables. It might have felt like more because the room was so big, but I believe the number is around that. Our goal as always was to bring as much exotic gear [as possible that] people don't get to hear elsewhere and not place any restrictions on what headphones they can use in the room.

"We had two ZMF Aegis tube amplifiers"—I'm hoping to review one—"and one DIY unit, plus one 'Air-Mid,' which was Keenan's design that he made just a few of and will likely be our next commercial product." Keenan is better known online as L0rdGwyn (footnote 2).

"For this show, we had something like 20 different DAC/amp combos stationed on the tables, including many different brands from Donald North Audio, Jeff Wells Audio, dCS, Cen.Grand, JPS Labs, Bottlehead, Holo Audio, Cayin, Nitsch Audio, and more."

Rooms like Zach's are the chief reason I attend CanJam. Where else in audiophile worlds could someone audition this many high-quality amps and DACs with the music and transducers they choose themselves, in one room, in one day?

I asked Zach about how he sources this many DACs.

"We use a Roon Core system with their Nucleus, which is the best for running multiple tables at one time, with Qobuz running on all the accounts and a dual mesh Wi-Fi system with our own 5G router to make sure there are no interruptions. We've tried many different iterations, and this one works best!"

Under the leadership of Zach and his wife, partner, and ZMF co-owner, Bevin, the company has developed into a major creative enterprise. It has become one of the crown jewels of the headphone community.

In the 14 years since the company got its start, ZMF's exquisitely crafted headphones have garnered critical acclaim from yours truly and hordes of devotees. In Gramophone Dreams #35, I reviewed ZMF's Auteur openbacks and Vérité closed backs plus their Pendant tube amplifier, which was designed by Justin Weber of Ampsandsound. Those experiences made me a devotee for life.

Zach told me that he has a master's degree in film directing from Columbia College Chicago and that this background in the arts transferred naturally to his work with audio. Interestingly, ZMF stands for "Zach Mehrbach Films," which I imagine is only one of his several true callings. I mean, every artist wants to make films, right? I know I do.

Zach and Bevin share their home and workshop with their Mountain Cur dogs. That makes ZMF the definition of a family-owned business—one that's in Chicago, Illinois, my hometown! I know from growing up there that being a Midwesterner is a special privilege that people from the coasts do not understand. The Midwest is where building things under the Big Dome Sky feels like a sacred ritual. That's why I feel a special bond with Midwesterners like Zach and his ZMF crew.

Woo Audio and JPS Labs
Another jewel of the headphone industry is Jack Wu of Woo Audio. Woo Audio doesn't build headphones, only tube headphone amplifiers and DACs, but it also sells and distributes some of the world's best headphones. That's why Jack was sharing a large room with JPS Labs and Stax. When JPS Labs brought out the Abyss AB1266 Phi TC, which remains my #1 reference for high-resolution planar magnetics, everybody said, "Nice start Joe! Now try making that thing attractive and comfortable."

At CanJam, JPS Labs was introducing its replacement for Stereophile's 2023 Headphone of the Year, the Abyss Diana TC. That replacement, the Abyss Diana DZ, is a luxury audiophile headphone that qualifies as the most beautiful and highest-resolving headphone that I could fall asleep on the couch with. With the Diana DZ, cable-maker Joe Skubinsky and his clever sons outdid themselves, topping everybody's expectations.

JPS enthusiasts and critics didn't just want attractive, comfortable, high resolution; they also wanted more affordable. Joe and his kids aced that test, too, by introducing the easy-to-drive, easy-on-the-wallet Abyss JOAL.

Like ZMF and Woo, JPS Labs is a family business that makes its products in the US.

Speaking of Woo Audio, Jack Wu was introducing that company's newest flagship: the WA24 20th Anniversary Edition amplifier ($12,999). The circuit for this exceedingly beautiful amplifier features only an input transformer with a nanocrystalline core, two parallel single-ended 3A/109E directly heated triodes, and an output transformer. That's it. No resistors. No coupling capacitors. No feedback. There's a linear power supply in the chassis's bottom and every kind of headphone input on the chassis's front. All single-ended. All fast and clear.

Musingly, I wondered if it was a coincidence that both Nelson Pass's Zen-Beast and Woo Audio's new WA24 employ high-nickel step-up transformers and output transformers. I wondered if Nelson Pass and Jack Wu's father, who designs Woo Audio's amps, were both channeling Western Electric's timelessly beautiful and infinitely durable 7A mixer-amplifier (footnote 3), which used only three WE216A tubes, three mu-metal transformers, and some cloth-covered wire.

Ampsandsound, Dan Clark, and HeadAmp
Page Six and People magazine texted alerts to NYC CanJammers that audio's newest, hippest entrepreneur, Devon Turnbull (OJAS), was spotted, wearing a metallic green puffer in the Dan Clark/Ampsandsound/HeadAmp room. These popup alerts said that Devon was checking out Ampsandsound's fantastic-looking, 98lb (!!!) Red October XL 300B headphone and floor-speaker amp. The Red October was sourced by Ampsandsound's DAC 1.2, which according to Justin Weber is a modified, repackaged Audio Note UK kit. The headphones Turnbull was using were Dan Clark's Stealth.

When I got there, Devon was gone, but I got to hang with old friends Sue and Andy Regan. After I got a kiss and a hug from Sue, I got a big, smart-ass grin from Andy, who's a world-class salesperson. I met him decades ago at Sound by Singer. He is now president of Dan Clark Audio. After profuse rude chatting, I shushed myself and listened to the Dan Clark Stealth through Ampsandsound's Red October XL and HeadAmp's latest Gilmore Current Mirror amplifier named "CFA3 SS-ZF," which showcased a new variable-taper relay-activated volume pot.

Technics
One of my favorite humans in all global audio is a gentle-speaking fellow named Bill Voss, Technics' US business development manager. He's tall, always smiling, and a master storyteller. When he's explaining things, I automatically listen closely. I met Bill in 2016 while I was auditioning the Technics SL-1200GAE turntable for Gramophone Dreams #11.

Technics had two adjoining tables, worked by two unusually knowledgeable people, Bill and Technics Senior Product Specialist Anna Mineta, demonstrating what was surely the most unusual product in the big room: the Technics SA-C600 Premium Class Network CD Receiver. I asked Bill, "What in this whole silly world is a Network CD Player?" He said it was a "completely digital (not class-D) 60W power amplifier/receiver that had no DAC and plays every type of recorded music." It has no DAC because the digital conversion is done by Technics' special (not class-D) digital amplifier. The SA-C600 can drive headphones and loudspeakers, play CDs, and stream music and internet radio. It even has a moving magnet phono stage. Bill said it cost under $1000, and I said, "That would be a gas to review."

Grado, Grado, and Grado
Talk about family businesses: Grado Labs must be the most family of all family audio businesses, and it's local. Grado Labs was started in 1953 by Joe Grado (1925–2015). It's located in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Ever since I was a teen, every turntable I've owned used one or another of Joe's moving iron cartridges. I bought a new cartridge every year back when Grado's cheapest cartridge cost $15. With Grado's headphones, I go back to the SR60s in the early '90s (footnote 4); they too were almost free. While surfing the aisles, I ran into Joe's nephew, Grado Labs COO Rich Grado, his charming wife Donna, and Grado VP of Operations Matthew Grado.

In the big CanJam room, Rich was demonstrating Grado's new Signature S950 and Signature HP100 SE headphones and celebrating the birthday of "Uncle Joe," who would have turned 100 this year. Stay tuned for my S950 report.

HiFiMan
I go way back with HiFiMan's big-brained top dog, Dr. Fang Bian, who founded his company in China in 2007, around the time of the first CanJam. A few years later, he and Steve Guttenberg made me a born-again headphoner.

Since then, Fang's brainy temperament and worldly charm have haloed his constantly evolving technological advancements and made HiFiMan into one of the shiniest pillars of this rapidly expanding community. The pace and effectiveness of Fang's innovations spawn legions of new enthusiasts and spur competing manufacturers in a manner that keeps the global head-fi scene young and vital.

I remember Fang telling Guttenberg and me, at CanJam 2020, that the outbreak of coronavirus in China had stranded him in New York. The following year, CanJam 2021 was canceled, and 2022's event was sparsely attended. I remember wearing masks at CanJam 2023.

I remember also how what we now call CanJam started as a user-only headphoner meetup, and that at some point its organizer, Jude Mansilla, founder of Head-Fi.org, decided to invite manufacturers. This idea brought CanJam Global to the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, where I first met Dr. Fang Bian. Today, CanJam NYC is the world's largest, best-attended celebration of the headphone arts—and my favorite audio show.

At this year's CanJam, Fang was demonstrating a luxurious-looking Susvara Unveiled, a new, lighter, stronger, more attractive, higher sensitivity, lower impedance, easier-to-drive version of the highly venerated (but hard-to-drive) Susvara, which I continue to regard as living proof that head-mounted transducers are technically more accurate and more musically expressive than boxes sitting on floors.

End Of Day Saturday, Continued
My dear and respected friend Adam Sohmer of Sohmer Associates is HiFiMan's electronics PR representative. It was he who invited me, Michael Trei, Steve Guttenberg, and about 20 other members of the hi-fi press corps to dine at the Marriott's fanciest restaurant on Saturday night. I look forward to this annual meetup at every CanJam. Where better to end a long day of friendly jabber, amp studies, and sitting at cloth-covered tables trying on ear muffins than to sit on couches swapping tales and tasting steaks with some of the best journalists in head-fi. Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Fang.

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Footnote 2: See this Head-Fi thread for Keenan's DIY projects: head-fi.org/threads/l0rdgwyns-diy-audio.921105.

Footnote 3: See radiomuseum.org/r/western_el_amplifier_7a.html.

Footnote 4 See Corey Greenberg's review here. Sam Tellig comments, too. Jim Austin reviewed the successor SR60i.