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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.

At CanJam, Woo unveiled a preproduction prototype of the WA23 Luna, a combination headphone amplifier and preamp. Woo Audio's Jack Wu (the Wu behind Woo) explained that the idea was to offer a top-tier product smaller than their WA33 flagship, which is a single-…

As I walked by the Centrance booth, Centrance owner Michael Goodman waved. I waved back, walked over, and listened to his HiFi-M8 V2 Portable Reference DAC/Amp ($749) and Ampersand Balanced Portable Reference Headphone Power Amplifier ($749), connected to a pair of HEDDphone Air Motion Transformer headphones ($1899; see Herb Reichert's July 2020 Gramophone Dreams column for a listening test.)

The HiFi-M8 V2 has a gain dial, bass and treble controls, asynchronous USB digital and 3.5mm analog inputs (plus Bluetooth), balanced output, bandwidth specified at more than 40kHz, and a “…

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…

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…

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.

The tracks I listened to through the Meze Audio Empyrean planar-magnetic headphones (which are spec'd at 31.6 ohm impedance and 100dB/mW sensitivity at 1kHz) with the Mojo 2 sounded right—realistic—on both good and less-good recordings. The music had a seamless quality. Details were present in full but were not overhyped. Tonal balance was neutral. Music felt natural.

On "Thinking of a…

By 1968 I'd saved up for a V-15 Type II, and installed it in a Dual 1009SK record player. Wow! But, committed to the principle of using a low vertical tracking force (VTF) to minimize damage to my record grooves, I set the tonearm for the V-15 II's minimum recommended VTF of 0.75gm—and, as the Shure's…

With the exception of the high-output CAR-20H, all Kuzma cartridges share very similar specifications, though their…

American song of our time
While the American art song tradition is easily traceable back to the 19th century, the 20th century…

With this music feature, we're trying some new things. First, we've created a playlist on Qobuz that lists most of the individual tracks mentioned in this review; it can be accessed here. The feature refers to many whole albums, however; rather than load up the playlist with individual tracks, making it unwieldy, we've instead included URLs to the albums, on Qobuz or Tidal. If you're a Roon user, you can import the list into Roon by favoriting it in Qobuz. To access a complete album, see the link.

If you're expecting hi-fi sound, a word of warning:…