CanJam London 2024: Our Top Ten

CanJam is a global phenomenon. The show is a rolling event that moves worldwide. In 2024 alone, CanJam rocks up to New York, Singapore, Shanghai, London, and Dallas. It also runs a ‘Social’ event in Orange County. CanJam London 2024 is the only European event in the hectic personal audio calendar. Waterloo’s plush Park Plaza gave over two floors to headphones, IEMs, amps, DACs, cables and more this weekend. It’s a fabulous and bewildering event, part bazaar, part reverent listening sessions.

The English—always fond of a queue—often stand four deep, waiting patiently to hear a product. Queue-jumping—known to the rest of the world as ‘cutting in line’—is met with that most British of insults: loud tutting. With an exhibitor list running to over 50 names, seeing them all is extremely difficult. Here is our Top Ten best-in-show collection of highlights and what we think will prove popular in personal audio this year and next.

Chord Electronics

Chord Electronics has been making pro-audio products since its first days. Even before the brand made its mark in domestic audio, Chord Electronics supplied power amplifiers to the BBC to drive its monitors. However, the Alto is the most recent product to begin life in the pro-world and return to the domestic market. Alto is a nearfield all-analogue monitoring workstation. It combines a headphone and matching power amplifier designed to drive mini-monitor loudspeakers. Driving up to four headphones, it outputs 2250mW to its personal audio output and 50W into four ohms for loudspeakers. It has XLR and RCA inputs, and a remote control (why?). It will cost around £3,000 when launched later this year.

Electromod

UK headphone distributor Electromod had new models from two of its leading brands on show at CanJam London 2024: Topping and Violectric. Value-driven superstars Topping showed the new A50III amplifier (£199) and the matching D50II DAC (£229). These diminutive electronics have giant-killing properties, outperforming many larger and more expensive devices. The Violectric V101 headphone amplifier, proving extremely popular at £700, joined them. Electromod also showcased the upcoming V324 headphone amplifier. This is expected to sit in the middle of the range and will be available by the end of the year. Finally, the company has also introduced a new line of Moondrop IEMs, with prices ranging from £25 to £335.

Ferrum Audio

Polish electronics brand Ferrum Audio‘s first product was the Hypsos hybrid power supply (£1,100). Hypsos upgraded a wide range of products with a wall-wart or plug-top power. An Oor headphone amplifier (£2,000), Erco headphone amp/DAC, and Wandler DAC (£2,795) followed. At CanJam London 2024, Ferrum showed its new Wandler GoldenSound Edition (£3,395), Hypsos Dual Output hybrid power supply, and Erco Gen 2 headphone amp/DAC (£1,795). You can even upgrade your first-generation Erco. Ferrum’s Hypsos Dual Output is available soon.

Hifonix

UK distributor/retailer Hifonix is determined to ‘own’ the personal audio space in the UK and judging by its comprehensive and impressive stands around the show… it’s doing just that! Hifonix was the place where people got to hear the first UK samples of HiFiMAN’s Susvara Unveiled and Mini Shangri-La electrostatic headphone system, where you could hear the Feliks Audio Envy 25th Anniversary amplifier, as well as a plethora of current models from ever-green brands in the personal audio space.

But all this was merely a palette cleanser for what awaited upstairs. In Hifonix state-of-the-art room – where the words ‘how much?’ were banished to the Forbidden Zone – the company delivered a spectacular performing system. This comprised a dCS Vivaldi APEX DAC and Upsampler, a two-chassis £110,000 Viva Audio Egoista headphone amplifier (currently, the only one of its kind in the world), a complete loom of Nordost Odin 2 cables and top QBase. The Viva amps weigh around 65kg each, have copper chassis and point-to-point wiring, and the main unit can drive dynamic and electrostatic headphones delivering up to 11w in Class A, as well as loudspeakers. There were a choice of top-end headphones but we settled on the RAAL ribbons. This was one of the most impressive and ‘there’ sounding musical experiences I’ve had from any audio system; personal or otherwise!

Meze Audio

“We can’t make them fast enough!” cried Meze Audio‘s Alexandra Rizoiu. The new Alba is the company’s first in-ear monitor since the up-market Rai Penta. It sports a 10.8mm dynamic driver, detachable cables, and an inline USB-C DAC adaptor. It comes in a striking pearl white finish and matching white travel pouch. It’s little wonder the first batch of the Alba sold out in seconds—especially as it costs just £139.

Noble Audio

If Meze Audio has recently added an IEM to its headphone lineup, then Noble Audio is going in the other direction. The company’s next product is Apollo; its first wired/wireless over-ear headphone. The Apollo is a hybrid design with a dynamic mid/bass driver and a planar magnetic unit for midrange and high frequencies. Noble does not disclose the crossover frequency to show the smooth integration between the two drivers. You can’t hear the point where they cross over. The closed-back headphone also features noise cancellation. Apollo is expected to cost around £599 and is scheduled for late August.

Remora Pro

Remora Pro is a lossless ultra-wide bandwidth wireless signal transmission system. It’s not just a personal audio product and is still a ‘work in progress’. It comprises a module that can clamp to the headband of your headphones and a USB dongle that connects to your source. The module at the headphone end is a smartwatch-level computer that allows users to download apps to provide tailored DSP, head position data for VR systems, tone shaping and more. It currently runs at lossless 24bit, 96kHz PCM rates, with the potential for multiple headsets or use in wireless high-performance multichannel in-room speaker control. It operates in the relatively uncontested 8GHz range. The system has extremely low latency, but its ultra-wide bandwidth precludes it from using a multiroom approach. Prices are expected to be around £500 per module, with the full headband system costing around £900.

SAEQ

Undoubtedly the best-named headphone amplifier in the business, the SAEQ (short for Serbian Audio EQuipment) Armageddon delivers a healthy half a watt into a 300Ω headphone. Its pure class A amplifier stage dissipates an eye-watering 300W per channel and delivers a valve-like performance in the process. It also features a tightly balanced 24-step attenuator and connections for balanced and single-ended headphones. The £7,200 SEAQ Armageddon gets close to destroying the competition! SQAQ is one of many brands Elise Audio showed at CanJam London 2024.

Sennheiser

Headphone legends Sennheiser showed the HD 620 S closed-back headphones (£300). It compared them with considerably more upmarket models from the Sennheiser line. This helped show how open-backed a pair of closed-back headphones can sound. It’s a bold and ambitious comparison. But many came away deeply impressed by the sound of both of them!

Viking Weave Cables

While many companies adopted an ‘everything, everywhere’ approach to their table layout, UK-based newcomer Viking Weave Cables took a more structured and clean approach to selling its wares.  Its combination of simple explanations of what goes into the cable, the clear visual and sonic distinctions between the designs, and their excellent value, given their handbuilt nature, all show a lot of promise.

We could have easily made this a top 50 if not for a camera battery that decided to overheat and start to bulge at the wrong time! As always, there were many brands with multi-driver IEMs with exotic finishes and custom cables. Many of these were extremely promising but needed photographic evidence.

Next time, I’ll bring a new camera!

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