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There is a place that all gearheads and tech nerds must visit at least once in their lives. A store so epic, so incredible, that it almost defies description. To put it broadly, imagine if an entire Best Buy (or your local electronics store) was dedicated to what is now just one section within that store. Then you stack eight floors on top of it, each with its own focus. So an entire Best Buy’s worth of space just for TV/AV. Above that, an entire Best Buy’s worth of space just for cell phones, and so on. Add in a floor for clothes, a floor with a food court, and suddenly you start to get the idea. It’s like an entire mall’s worth of floorspace dedicated to tech and other gear.

Read more: Behold the Greatest Store on Earth

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Last month, I wrote about a new streaming service that promises high-resolution, lossless audio. The main difference between Pure Audio and all the other streaming services that offer high-resolution, lossless audio is its focus on spatial audio. Fair enough.

Read more: Do You Really Need Hi-Rez Audio?

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Finally, a new music-streaming service. Just what everyone wanted. Just what the world needed. Pure Audio promises “high-quality, immersive sound experiences that transport listeners into the heart of the music,” as opposed to the high-quality offerings from, you know, Apple, Amazon, Qobuz, and Tidal. But OK, sure.

Read more: Is There Space for Another Music-Streaming Service?

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A few years ago, I titled one of my first SoundStage! Solo columns “The Endless Hassle of Connecting to In-Flight Entertainment.” At the end of the article, I mentioned that some airlines were rolling out upgraded entertainment options that included the ability to connect to your own Bluetooth headphones.

Read more: Bluetooth in the Sky

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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

  1. MEMS!
  2. Headphones 2025 and Beyond
  3. Don’t Call It a Gift Guide
  4. Do You Care About Features?
  5. The Constancy of Change (Goodbye, Sound & Vision)
  6. Is Accuracy the Only Option?
  7. The Opposite of Headphones
  8. The Death and Immediate Rise of MQA (Again)
  9. How Terrible Is Temu?
  10. The Delightful Weirdness of Open Earbuds
  11. The Formats Time Forgot
  12. The Return of the Cassette
  13. Do You Need a Headphone Amp?
  14. The Highs and Lows of the Consumer Electronics Show
  15. 2023: A Year in Headphones (and Other Stuff)
  16. Perfect Noise Canceling?
  17. The Rise and Fall and Maybe Rise Again of MQA
  18. Have Your Music Tastes Changed?
  19. Beware AI “Reviews”
  20. Six Months In
  21. Why Do People Think Headphones Are Magic?
  22. Recalibrating the Ears
  23. Is There Such a Thing as a Perfect Pair of Headphones?
  24. Everyone Should Own These Headphones
  25. What is the Soundtrack to Your Life?
  26. The Endless Hassle of Connecting to In-Flight Entertainment
  27. In-Ear vs. Over-Ear for Travel
  28. Traveling as an Audiophile
  29. Greetings!
  30. A Fond Farewell
  31. When Is the Amp Important?
  32. Evaluating the Knowles Preferred Response Curve
  33. Do We Really Need All These Target Curves?
  34. The Problem with Hearing Correction in Headphones
  35. RF: A Phantom Menace?
  36. Understanding Current
  37. The Big Mistake Many Headphone Makers Keep on Making
  38. How Consistent Is the Quality of Headphones and Earphones?
  39. David Chesky’s New New Revolution in Headphone Sound
  40. Why You Shouldn’t Always Rely on Measurements
  41. The Shocking Truth About Truck-Stop Earphones
  42. Are There Valid Objections to the Harman Curve?
  43. Is It Possible for Headphones to Sound Fast? (Or Slow?)
  44. The Four Things that Recording an Album Taught Me About Audio
  45. What Playing Music Taught Me About Audio
  46. Voicing Headphones, Part 3: Campfire Audio's Ken Ball and 64 Audio’s Vitaliy Belonozhko
  47. The #1 Red Flag in Audio Articles, Ads . . . and Everything Else
  48. How Not to Go Deaf from Headphone Listening
  49. What’s the Future of High-End Headphones?
  50. How Audio Writers Are Killing the Audio Industry
  51. Why Buying High-Quality Headphones Is a More Responsible Purchase
  52. Does It Make Sense to Demo Audio Over the Internet?
  53. The New Standard That Killed the Loudness War
  54. Headphones 2020: The Year in Review
  55. Three Cases Where Measurements Didn’t Work
  56. How Much Can We Really Tell From Listening?
  57. Balanced Armatures: Why You Might (or Might Not) Want Them
  58. The Coming Revolution in Headphone Sound Quality
  59. Can Accuracy in Music Reproduction Exist?
  60. The Biggest Lie in Audio
  61. Voicing Headphones, Part 2: HiFiMan’s Fang Bian and Focal’s Mégane Montabonel
  62. What Will the Next Generation of Headphones Be Like?
  63. How Far Have Headphones Come?
  64. Voicing Headphones, Part 1: PSB/NAD's Paul Barton and Dan Clark Audio's Dan Clark
  65. How Will Headphone Testing and Reviewing Change in the 2020s?
  66. What the AKG K371 Headphones Tell Us About "Slow Listening"
  67. Where Are We At With The Harman Curve?
  68. Why Headphone Amps Are More Interesting Than Speaker Amps
  69. 2019’s Most Important Headphone Presentation
  70. Noise Canceling Is Much More Complicated Than We Thought
  71. How Does Aging Affect Audio Perception?
  72. Noise-Canceling Headphones for 17 Cents?
  73. Is Chesky Dumping Binaural?
  74. Why My Fi Ain't Hi-Fi
  75. Latency: A New Concern for Audiophiles?
  76. How to Read Our Headphone Measurements
  77. Eardrum Suck: The Mystery Solved!
  78. Should Audio Gear be Considered Luxury Goods?
  79. Headphone Equalization Using Measurements
  80. Why Is It So Hard to Rate Headphones?
  81. Five Things Headphone Enthusiasts Get Right (and That the Two-Channel Guys Get Wrong)
  82. The Best Possible Way to Test Audio Products (and Why Most People Don't Do It)
  83. Will aptX Adaptive Improve Headphone Sound?
  84. Is the miniDSP EARS the Death of Headphone Measurement? Or its Savior?
  85. What Are Measurements Good For?
  86. How Much Noise Do Your Headphones Really Block?
  87. Why We're Launching "SoundStage! Solo"

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    Latest Comments

    Doug Schneider 1 days ago Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 Headphones
    @Joe Werner This is definitely something on our minds. We feel that the subjective part is still ...
    Joe Werner 2 days ago Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 Headphones
    Any update on adding measurements to headphone reviews?
    headphonejack 3 days ago Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 Headphones
    What about these headphones compared to the Bowers Px8? Px8 is more expensive but older.
    Geoffrey Morrison 1 months ago Is There Space for Another Music-Streaming Service?
    @BFKAs far as I know Deezer has a lossless option but is only 16/44.1.
    nathan 1 months ago Are There Valid Objections to the Harman Curve?
    Ok but what about when someone will say headphones are "bloated' because of bass in ...
    BFK 1 months ago Is There Space for Another Music-Streaming Service?
    What, no Deezer?

    Doug Schneider 2 months ago Is There Space for Another Music-Streaming Service?
    @John GruesenMOG, wow, It's a long time since I've heard that name. I think became Beats ...
    John Gruesen 2 months ago Is There Space for Another Music-Streaming Service?
    I've been using Tidal and Amazon for many years, At one time I used MOG ...
    Mohit 2 months ago JBL Tour Pro 2 True Wireless Earphones
    I've used Tour Pro 2s for the past year and they've not been particularly good. ...
    Doug Schneider 4 months ago Meze Audio Rai Penta Earphones
    @ArupGlad you enjoyed this article. Brent no longer writes for this site, but as a ...