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.