Dedicated to Headphones and Earphones

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Do you remember your first audio system? What were your first headphones and audio player? I use the term “audio player” broadly to cover portable devices and home gear. Were you plugging a huge pair of “cans” into the front of a record player, or was it a Koss CD player with eight whole seconds of anti-skip technology?

Read more: The Power of Nostalgia

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As I’m writing this, the last of the historic and horrific Los Angeles fires have finally been extinguished. A bit of rain, far less than we typically get this time of year, has quenched the dry brush and doused the remaining embers. I was lucky. My house was never in any real danger, largely thanks to the wind’s direction, though for several nights I could see the fires in the distance from my porch. They were close enough that, for at least one night, my friends and I had packed go-bags in case we needed to evacuate.

Read more: Fire and Music

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As I mentioned last month, one of the things I planned to check out at CES was MEMS, or micro-electromechanical systems. These tiny devices, made by California-based xMEMS Labs, are a different type of driver for both earphones and headphones. I was able to get a closer look not just at the currently available drivers like what you’d find in the Creative Aurvana Ace Mimi earphones, but some upcoming variations and several other uses of the technology that look equally, if not more, fascinating.

Read more: MEMS!

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If the title didn’t give it away, I figured this was a perfect time to take a look at some tech and tech-adjacent things coming in 2025. In all three cases, they have potential ramifications for 2026 and beyond as well. Perhaps that’s a bit too grandiose. Maybe it’d be less hyperbolic to say “here’s some stuff you should be aware of” when it comes to the narrow niche we cover here at SoundStage! Solo.

Read more: Headphones 2025 and Beyond

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This isn’t a gift guide. OK, it’s kinda a gift guide. Recently I received an email from a reader who was spoiled by choice. They had a reasonable budget but couldn’t decide what to get. Fair enough—there are a lot of options out there. I figured, given the time of year, that a sort of gift-guide-related post might help point people like them in a specific direction. Maybe it’s a gift for yourself, or a gift for someone who’s interested in a style of headphones with which you’re not particularly familiar.

Read more: Don’t Call It a Gift Guide

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For most people shopping for audio gear, sound quality is obviously paramount. Or mostly paramount. Usually paramount? In your calculations for a potential pair of new headphones or earphones, how much weight do you give features? Are there certain must-have features, or is sound quality the only consideration?

Read more: Do You Care About Features?

  1. The Constancy of Change (Goodbye, Sound & Vision)
  2. Is Accuracy the Only Option?
  3. The Opposite of Headphones
  4. The Death and Immediate Rise of MQA (Again)
  5. How Terrible Is Temu?
  6. The Delightful Weirdness of Open Earbuds
  7. The Formats Time Forgot
  8. The Return of the Cassette
  9. Do You Need a Headphone Amp?
  10. The Highs and Lows of the Consumer Electronics Show
  11. 2023: A Year in Headphones (and Other Stuff)
  12. Perfect Noise Canceling?
  13. The Rise and Fall and Maybe Rise Again of MQA
  14. Have Your Music Tastes Changed?
  15. Beware AI “Reviews”
  16. Six Months In
  17. Why Do People Think Headphones Are Magic?
  18. Recalibrating the Ears
  19. Is There Such a Thing as a Perfect Pair of Headphones?
  20. Everyone Should Own These Headphones
  21. What is the Soundtrack to Your Life?
  22. The Endless Hassle of Connecting to In-Flight Entertainment
  23. In-Ear vs. Over-Ear for Travel
  24. Traveling as an Audiophile
  25. Greetings!
  26. A Fond Farewell
  27. When Is the Amp Important?
  28. Evaluating the Knowles Preferred Response Curve
  29. Do We Really Need All These Target Curves?
  30. The Problem with Hearing Correction in Headphones
  31. RF: A Phantom Menace?
  32. Understanding Current
  33. The Big Mistake Many Headphone Makers Keep on Making
  34. How Consistent Is the Quality of Headphones and Earphones?
  35. David Chesky’s New New Revolution in Headphone Sound
  36. Why You Shouldn’t Always Rely on Measurements
  37. The Shocking Truth About Truck-Stop Earphones
  38. Are There Valid Objections to the Harman Curve?
  39. Is It Possible for Headphones to Sound Fast? (Or Slow?)
  40. The Four Things that Recording an Album Taught Me About Audio
  41. What Playing Music Taught Me About Audio
  42. Voicing Headphones, Part 3: Campfire Audio's Ken Ball and 64 Audio’s Vitaliy Belonozhko
  43. The #1 Red Flag in Audio Articles, Ads . . . and Everything Else
  44. How Not to Go Deaf from Headphone Listening
  45. What’s the Future of High-End Headphones?
  46. How Audio Writers Are Killing the Audio Industry
  47. Why Buying High-Quality Headphones Is a More Responsible Purchase
  48. Does It Make Sense to Demo Audio Over the Internet?
  49. The New Standard That Killed the Loudness War
  50. Headphones 2020: The Year in Review
  51. Three Cases Where Measurements Didn’t Work
  52. How Much Can We Really Tell From Listening?
  53. Balanced Armatures: Why You Might (or Might Not) Want Them
  54. The Coming Revolution in Headphone Sound Quality
  55. Can Accuracy in Music Reproduction Exist?
  56. The Biggest Lie in Audio
  57. Voicing Headphones, Part 2: HiFiMan’s Fang Bian and Focal’s Mégane Montabonel
  58. What Will the Next Generation of Headphones Be Like?
  59. How Far Have Headphones Come?
  60. Voicing Headphones, Part 1: PSB/NAD's Paul Barton and Dan Clark Audio's Dan Clark
  61. How Will Headphone Testing and Reviewing Change in the 2020s?
  62. What the AKG K371 Headphones Tell Us About "Slow Listening"
  63. Where Are We At With The Harman Curve?
  64. Why Headphone Amps Are More Interesting Than Speaker Amps
  65. 2019’s Most Important Headphone Presentation
  66. Noise Canceling Is Much More Complicated Than We Thought
  67. How Does Aging Affect Audio Perception?
  68. Noise-Canceling Headphones for 17 Cents?
  69. Is Chesky Dumping Binaural?
  70. Why My Fi Ain't Hi-Fi
  71. Latency: A New Concern for Audiophiles?
  72. How to Read Our Headphone Measurements
  73. Eardrum Suck: The Mystery Solved!
  74. Should Audio Gear be Considered Luxury Goods?
  75. Headphone Equalization Using Measurements
  76. Why Is It So Hard to Rate Headphones?
  77. Five Things Headphone Enthusiasts Get Right (and That the Two-Channel Guys Get Wrong)
  78. The Best Possible Way to Test Audio Products (and Why Most People Don't Do It)
  79. Will aptX Adaptive Improve Headphone Sound?
  80. Is the miniDSP EARS the Death of Headphone Measurement? Or its Savior?
  81. What Are Measurements Good For?
  82. How Much Noise Do Your Headphones Really Block?
  83. Why We're Launching "SoundStage! Solo"

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    Adnan 11 hours ago Technics EAH-AZ70W True Wireless Earphones
    This is a solid, in-depth review! The Technics EAH-AZ70Ws definitely seem like a premium option ...
    7Stocks 4 days ago Technics EAH-AZ70W True Wireless Earphones
    Whether you're a developer or designer, premium graphic kits are essential.
    7Stocks provides creative resources ...
    Doug Schneider 7 days ago Meze Audio Rai Penta Earphones
    @ArupGlad you enjoyed this article. Brent no longer writes for this site, but as a ...
    Arup 9 days ago Meze Audio Rai Penta Earphones
    Great review, Brent! Really appreciate the deep dive into both the technical design and real-world ...
    Macmoom101 18 days ago The Constancy of Change (Goodbye, Sound & Vision) (2)
    I faced the same dilemma when buying headphones a few years ago whats useful and ...
    Kyriacos 1 months ago The Return of the Cassette
    Well I am still using cassettes today !! With the right kit they are super. ...
    Kyriacos 1 months ago Do You Need a Headphone Amp?
    Hi, thank you for a balanced analysis of the need for a headphone amp, before ...
    Doug Schneider 2 months ago Are There Valid Objections to the Harman Curve?
    @JeramiahYou are in ways correct. What it is is the average preference for listeners, which ...
    Jeramiah 2 months ago Are There Valid Objections to the Harman Curve?
    I gather that the Harman curve is just an average, a starting point. You might ...
    Carl Reynolds 3 months ago HiFiMan EF400 Headphone Amplifier–DAC
    Whether or not this DAC/AMP is worth five hundred bucks depends more on one's specific ...