Wired Headphone Stalwarts Hold Strong at CanJam Despite Wireless Growth

Demo seats at the 73 exhibitor booths were crammed with attendees trying out their tunes on headphones ranging from just under $100 to well into the four figures. Some headphones were powered by pricey tube amplifiers, most were connected to semi-portable headphone amplifiers and we saw several companies ready with Lightning-to-headphone jack dongles for attendees who brought an iPhone as their music source.

The moves by Apple, Google, HTC, Motorola and Xiaomi to eliminate the headphone jack from smartphones may be driving an overall market shift to wireless designs, but at the high end, it’s a moot point, CanJam Global Producer Ethan Opolion told us. “Most of the CanJam crowd prioritize sound quality over convenience and so most do not use their phones as their primary listening device on the go,” Opolion said. Instead, they use dedicated portable audio players for serious listening and might use wireless earphones for on-the-go convenience, he said.

The CanJam community -- a diverse demographic skewing younger compared with the analog-era crowd found auditioning loudspeakers at the New York Audio Show -- numbers 450,000 subscribers worldwide, Opolion said. Last weekend’s midtown Manhattan event drew 2,400 attendees, a 20 percent uptick over last year, he said.

Dan Wiggins, co-director, Periodic Audio, saw CanJam as the perfect venue for his company's wired in-ear headphones, sold selectively online and through specialty dealers, he told us in a Friday pre-briefing. “You don’t need to please the masses.” He cited world population figures and said Periodic is happy with targeting 1 percent of 1 percent of the world’s 7.6 billion people with its trio of earphones that sell from $99 to $299.

“You only need to please those who share your passion,” and for Periodic, that’s “ultra-high quality, low complexity” in a portable product, said Wiggins. “It doesn’t get much simpler than just plugging a wire in,” he said, contrasting that with the Bluetooth pairing process and the need to keep wireless headphones charged. Periodic also showed at CanJam its upcoming Nickel portable amplifier, a $299, half-ounce device measuring 2 x 1.25 x 0.5 inches that supplements its trio of wired headphones.

When we showed Wiggins our music source -- an iPhone 7 wrapped in a Mophie charger with no headphone jack on either, he said, “People ask me how I deal with the iPhone” now that there's no headphone jack. Prefacing his comment with the understanding it might be “heretical” in some circles, Wiggins said, “I don’t care about iPhone.” The iPhone has 12 percent of the smartphone market and is "shrinking,” he said, and it doesn’t support high-res audio files, which is where Periodic's music passion lies. Apple Music, he noted, streams at 256 kbps, while Spotify and Tidal stream at higher bit rates.

Elsewhere at CanJam, HiFiMan bowed the Sundara over-ear planar headphones at $499, a new “sweet spot” for planar headphones and a new entry price point for HiFiMan, Chief Marketing Officer Andy Regan told us. Sundara has a new, proprietary diaphragm that’s 80 percent thinner than previous planar models with a wider frequency response -- 6 Hz-75 kHz -- and 10 decibels more sensitivity compared with previous designs.

With Sundara, HiFiMan is appealing to the smartphone customer who wants higher end sound for portable use. “You get an open-sounding planar dynamic that you can drive from your phone,” Regan said. The company also demoed the $8,000 Shangri-La Jr., introduced at CES, that combines a tube amplifier with electrostatic headphones. He called it the “ultimate representation” of the company's design capabilities.

Regan compared the Head-Fi community to the high-end audio community in enthusiasm, but the latter has price points creating a “barrier to entry.” Head-Fi has brought high-end audio to a younger audience, and CanJam helps give companies like HiFiMan a global reach with shows in Los Angeles, Singapore, London and China, and its show-within-a-show presence at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver. The high-end headphone market has taken off especially fast in Asia, Regan said, citing personal audio salons in Japan and Taiwan. “They’re almost like clubs,” serving tea and coffee and some with bakery items, he said. “They’ll match up any DAC with any headphone,” he said of the boutique shops. Of E-Earphone in Tokyo: “All they do is personal audio.”

Manhattan-based In Living Stereo, a high-end audio dealer with a traditional audio separates business, opened a headphone annex over the past year, owner Steven Mishoe told us. He took a booth at CanJam after witnessing the “energy and enthusiasm” at the first CanJam New York last year. Headphones are now about 20 percent of his store’s business vs. 5 percent five years ago, Mishoe said. DACs, too, are a big business for the company, he said.

Unlike the audio components business, where enthusiasts hold on to equipment for years, or trade up, the Head-Fi crowd owns multiple headphones for different use cases, some high-end and some in-ear for portable use, Mishoe said. Customers spend from $100 to $4,000 on headphones at the annex, he said.

Turntable company Pro-Ject showed its Pre Box S2 DAC/preamplifier, launched at CES, that’s Roon-ready and has a built-in MQA decoder. The S2 plays “any format” including up to DSD 512 and 24/192 PCM and can be powered by a computer via USB, said Brand Director Buzz Goddard. The $399 tag is very consumer-friendly price, Goddard said, noting the amp’s ESS Sabre ESS9038 dual DAC chip is found in four-figure DACs on the market. Goddard broke out S2 customers into two camps: the traditional audiophile looking for an MQA decoder and the CanJam customer. The roughly 4 x 4-inch unit is compact enough to go in a backpack, Goddard said.

On the bifurcation between wired and wireless headphone consumers, CanJam attendee Robert Heiblim, head of CTA’s audio board, said: "People want their music to follow them because it's about setting a mood." Sometimes, they want to sit in a hi-fi sweet spot and they might want to keep listening when it's time to go. "It's not a matter of good or bad," Heiblim said. "What we've done is enabled people to listen everywhere."

CanJam Notebook

Lenbrook is noodling ways to build its 192 kHz/24-bit BluOS multiroom audio technology into headphones, said Paul Barton, founder of Lenbrook brand PSB, at CanJam. “We’re working on it, but you have to put a computer inside and you need to run an operating system.” Lenbrook is working on scaling the technology, “but it’s going to take some time,” he said, saying, “It’s definitely one of our objectives.” The BluOS ecosystem can connect up to 64 players, and from a controller app, users can play music in sync in different rooms, or play different music sources simultaneously. Lenbrook previewed BluOS products from its first third-party licensee, Dali, at CES. Lenbrook was at CanJam drumming up interest in its latest products: the $399 NAD HP 70 and $399 PSB M4U active noise-canceling headphones launched at CES. The models are among the first to use Qualcomm’s aptX HD Bluetooth technology based on the CSR8675 chip capable of 48 kHz/24-bit bit rates. The headphones tout the brands’ RoomFeel technology, which adjusts for the room gain that recording engineers take into account when recording music for playback through home speakers. Adjusting for the lack of wall reflections in headphones results in a richer, more natural listening experience, Barton said.

Software company Sonarworks presented its True-Fi sound-correction software, a $79 program said to adjust sound of select headphones to achieve studio sound. Sonarworks measures headphones, makes a digital profile for that model and adjusts sound using a proprietary audio engine to correct for sound problems, said Janis Spogis, vice president-products. Sonarworks has profiles for some 130 headphones, and its technology is used in 20,000 recording studios worldwide, said the executive. A desktop version of the software is available now, and Android and iOS apps are due in Q2, he said.