Dedicated to Headphones and Earphones
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
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Take a look at the two camera lenses in the image below. It’s OK if you don’t know anything about photography. For this analogy to work, you can get the gist just from the picture. As far as the top-line specs go, these lenses are the same. They both fit Canon cameras, have a 50mm focal length (nicely between a telephoto and a wide angle), and are a “fast” f/1.4, which means they can take images in really low light and create a soft background when taking close-ups.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
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How much are your ears worth? All ears are equal, and even if some are more equal than others, it’s all infinite, right? Invaluable, or at the very least, irreplaceable? Our headphone hobby requires at least some hearing acuity, and yet I see very little discourse about the potential damage loud sounds can do to your hearing, permanently.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
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Just 18 months ago, we saw the fall of the controversial format called MQA, also known as Master Quality Authenticated. After being spun off into its own company by its creators, the resulting company, MQA Limited, went into administration. A few months later, its assets were purchased by an unlikely suitor: Lenbrook Industries, owner of the Bluesound, NAD, and PSB brands. This seemed like an odd mix.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
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If you’ve never heard of Temu, it’s an online marketplace similar to Amazon, Etsy, and what eBay has become. Broadly speaking, it’s a way for consumers to purchase products more or less directly from manufacturers. Said products are usually shipped straight from China. Quite often—and this is why Temu has become so popular—it’s a way to get extremely inexpensive products. Are they high quality? Absolutely not, but they are highly cheap.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
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I review a lot of headphones and earphones. Many of my reviews appear here in these virtual pages, but I also cover a lot of mainstream stuff for other outlets. Recently, I’ve had a few pairs of delightful weirdness come across my desk that I’m not reviewing on Solo, but I felt them worthy of a mention here. They’re ostensibly sports earphones, in that they’re intended primarily for outdoor exercise. Broadly, they’re considered “open” designs, though how they achieve that varies greatly. The overall idea is they let ambient sound in, while also supplying you with music.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
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Last month’s look at the return (kinda) of cassette sent me down a rabbit hole of old and forgotten formats. One stop on that adventure in format wonderland was the MiniDisc recorder review that also went live today. While MD holds a special place in my heart, it is by no means the only format that has been relegated to the attics, closets, and thrift shops of time.
- The Return of the Cassette
- Do You Need a Headphone Amp?
- The Highs and Lows of the Consumer Electronics Show
- 2023: A Year in Headphones (and Other Stuff)
- Perfect Noise Canceling?
- The Rise and Fall and Maybe Rise Again of MQA
- Have Your Music Tastes Changed?
- Beware AI “Reviews”
- Six Months In
- Why Do People Think Headphones Are Magic?
- Recalibrating the Ears
- Is There Such a Thing as a Perfect Pair of Headphones?
- Everyone Should Own These Headphones
- What is the Soundtrack to Your Life?
- The Endless Hassle of Connecting to In-Flight Entertainment
- In-Ear vs. Over-Ear for Travel
- Traveling as an Audiophile
- Greetings!
- A Fond Farewell
- When Is the Amp Important?
- Evaluating the Knowles Preferred Response Curve
- Do We Really Need All These Target Curves?
- The Problem with Hearing Correction in Headphones
- RF: A Phantom Menace?
- Understanding Current
- The Big Mistake Many Headphone Makers Keep on Making
- How Consistent Is the Quality of Headphones and Earphones?
- David Chesky’s New New Revolution in Headphone Sound
- Why You Shouldn’t Always Rely on Measurements
- The Shocking Truth About Truck-Stop Earphones
- Are There Valid Objections to the Harman Curve?
- Is It Possible for Headphones to Sound Fast? (Or Slow?)
- The Four Things that Recording an Album Taught Me About Audio
- What Playing Music Taught Me About Audio
- Voicing Headphones, Part 3: Campfire Audio's Ken Ball and 64 Audio’s Vitaliy Belonozhko
- The #1 Red Flag in Audio Articles, Ads . . . and Everything Else
- How Not to Go Deaf from Headphone Listening
- What’s the Future of High-End Headphones?
- How Audio Writers Are Killing the Audio Industry
- Why Buying High-Quality Headphones Is a More Responsible Purchase
- Does It Make Sense to Demo Audio Over the Internet?
- The New Standard That Killed the Loudness War
- Headphones 2020: The Year in Review
- Three Cases Where Measurements Didn’t Work
- How Much Can We Really Tell From Listening?
- Balanced Armatures: Why You Might (or Might Not) Want Them
- The Coming Revolution in Headphone Sound Quality
- Can Accuracy in Music Reproduction Exist?
- The Biggest Lie in Audio
- Voicing Headphones, Part 2: HiFiMan’s Fang Bian and Focal’s Mégane Montabonel
- What Will the Next Generation of Headphones Be Like?
- How Far Have Headphones Come?
- Voicing Headphones, Part 1: PSB/NAD's Paul Barton and Dan Clark Audio's Dan Clark
- How Will Headphone Testing and Reviewing Change in the 2020s?
- What the AKG K371 Headphones Tell Us About "Slow Listening"
- Where Are We At With The Harman Curve?
- Why Headphone Amps Are More Interesting Than Speaker Amps
- 2019’s Most Important Headphone Presentation
- Noise Canceling Is Much More Complicated Than We Thought
- How Does Aging Affect Audio Perception?
- Noise-Canceling Headphones for 17 Cents?
- Is Chesky Dumping Binaural?
- Why My Fi Ain't Hi-Fi
- Latency: A New Concern for Audiophiles?
- How to Read Our Headphone Measurements
- Eardrum Suck: The Mystery Solved!
- Should Audio Gear be Considered Luxury Goods?
- Headphone Equalization Using Measurements
- Why Is It So Hard to Rate Headphones?
- Five Things Headphone Enthusiasts Get Right (and That the Two-Channel Guys Get Wrong)
- The Best Possible Way to Test Audio Products (and Why Most People Don't Do It)
- Will aptX Adaptive Improve Headphone Sound?
- Is the miniDSP EARS the Death of Headphone Measurement? Or its Savior?
- What Are Measurements Good For?
- How Much Noise Do Your Headphones Really Block?
- Why We're Launching "SoundStage! Solo"
Latest Comments
14 days ago
Is Accuracy the Only Option?
Is accuracy measurable? What do you consider the most accurate headphones? Or maybe top 5?
17 days ago
Is Accuracy the Only Option?
It's an interesting point that's made. The only thing I'll say contrary is that with ...
1 months ago
PSB M4U 9 Headphones
@steve pageThis problem is an interesting one. If you see this post, let us know what ...
1 months ago
The Rise and Fall and Maybe Rise Again of MQA
@AndrewI don't know who was actually employed, but I have to say that the original ...
1 months ago
The Rise and Fall and Maybe Rise Again of MQA
@Doug SchneiderThe most notable defenders of MQA were employed by MQA. I suppose that's as it ...
1 months ago
Yamaha YH-5000SE Headphones
Well, this puts things into perspective: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/yamaha-yh-5000se-flagship-headphone-review.56209/
Jeff, you seemed so evidence based on CNET. Why the ...
1 months ago
Westone Audio Pro X10 Earphones
"a bit of extra midrange" - right: https://therollo9.squig.link/?share=Sonarworks_Target,Westone_Pro_X10
1 months ago
How Terrible Is Temu?
The thing is, even temu has some fairly decent options, such as kz audio,. If ...
2 months ago
JBL Tour Pro 2 True Wireless Earphones
Nice review. Thanks!
2 months ago
DALI IO-4 Bluetooth Headphones
Brent, great review! Your detailed insights on the DALI IO-4 headphones' sound quality and usability ...
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