Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 10 May 2020

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For years, I’ve mentioned in reviews the concept of taking open-back audiophile headphones on business trips. It seems like a good idea -- treating yourself to high-fidelity sound while you’re sitting up all night at the Hilton Garden Inn banging out a PowerPoint for your morning meeting -- but honestly, I never thought anyone would actually do it. That is, until I tried the HiFiMan Deva headphones.

Read more: HiFiMan Deva Bluetooth Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 01 May 2020

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I’ll be honest: sometimes I request products for review for the same reason a lot of people watch auto races -- with the expectation that I might see something crash and burn. Impressed as I was with the Atlantic Technology FS-HAL1 earphones, the announcement of Atlantic’s FS-HR280s -- a dual-driver, over-ear headphone design -- raised a zillion doubts in my mind. Although dual-driver over-ears were common back in the 1970s, every one of the dual-driver models I tried for my 2012 “survey” of vintage headphones was literally worse than any modern headphones I can think of (the JustBeats Solo perhaps excepted). Could a company that got into the headphone biz only a few months ago actually make a dual-driver design work?

Read more: Atlantic Technology FS-HR280 Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 20 April 2020

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I’d kind of sworn off reviewing Monoprice products on SoundStage! Solo for a while, because I’ve reviewed so many lately -- three headphones, one set of earphones, and two headphone amps. It’s been hard to resist because the company just keeps upping the ante, getting into pricier models and embracing advanced technologies at a staggering rate. And when I recently had the chance to hear four new models, and run some quick measurements of them, I found one that I just couldn’t resist reviewing -- the Monoprice Monolith M1570 headphones ($599.99, all prices USD).

Read more: Monoprice Monolith M1570 Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 10 April 2020

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Over the last decade, Dan Clark Audio (formerly MrSpeakers) has grown from a company that sold modded Fostex products to one of the most respected names in high-end headphones. But when I interviewed Clark for my March column, I realized I hadn’t reviewed any of his headphones since the Mad Dog Alphas, a Fostex-based model from 2012. I decided to correct that oversight by checking out the Æon Flow 2 Closed headphones ($899.99, all prices USD), a recent model to which an interesting new option has just been added.

Read more: Dan Clark Audio Æon Flow 2 Closed Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 01 April 2020

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A headphone enthusiast would likely pose a couple of questions when first confronting the Andover Audio PM-50s: Who’s Andover Audio? And what do they know about headphones? To answer the first question, it’s a Boston-area company founded by ex-Cambridge SoundWorks employees. Cambridge SoundWorks was a hyper-innovative speaker company founded in the mid-1980s by the legendary audio pioneer Henry Kloss. (Nowadays it’s a brand applied mostly to inexpensive Bluetooth speakers.) Andover Audio makes only a few products, and they’re rather idiosyncratic -- such as a sound system that slips under a turntable -- and the company continues the classic, quasi-Scandinavian styling of Kloss’s best-loved products.

Read more: Andover Audio PM-50 Headphones