SoundStage! Solo | SoundStageSolo.com

Details: 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.

Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 20 March 2020

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Value: 1/2
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From the Meze Empyreans to the AKG K371s, I’ve found a few sets of headphones that inspired no significant complaints from me. But I’ve never found a set of noise-canceling headphones I couldn’t complain about. Either the noise canceling was weak, or they exhibited too much eardrum suck, or they didn’t sound particularly good, or they were too bulky for travel. But there’s always hope! This month, it comes in the form of the Marshall Monitor II A.N.C. headphones ($319.99, all prices USD).

Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 10 February 2020

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Sound: 1/2
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The Drop + THX Pandas are radically different from any other headphones I’ve ever reviewed. According to Drop, while the company’s worked for five years with numerous brands to create headphones tailored to the desires of Drop’s audiophile community, the Pandas ($399.99 USD) are the first headphones whose design is based entirely on suggestions from the community. So in theory, at least, they represent not some company’s idea of what audiophiles want, but precisely what audiophiles want.

Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 20 January 2020

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Value: 1/2
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Reviewers' Choice My e-mail’s easy to find, so I hear from readers often. To my surprise, the most demanding ones are not audiophiles interested in getting the best sound, but business travelers looking for a set of headphones that can keep them happy through a transoceanic flight. They want effective noise canceling, great sound, and comfort that lasts for hours -- and some of them have bought every top-of-the-line noise-canceling model in search of the best. That’s just the customer DALI is targeting with the IO-6 headphones ($499 USD).

Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 10 December 2019

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Sound: 1/2
Value: 1/2
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Measurements can be found by clicking this link.

The Monoprice Monolith M570s ($299.99 USD) are, in the world of headphones, what the Steve Carell-starring The Office was in the world of TV: an Americanized version of an unfamiliar foreign thing. The M570s riff on a basic headphone design sold by the relatively obscure Chinese brands Blon and Sendy. They substitute a more familiar brand name, adopt a sleeker look, alter the tuning a bit, and cut the price -- by roughly 33 or 50 percent, respectively.

Details: Written by: Brent Butterworth; Created: 01 December 2019

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Sound:
Value: 1/2
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Measurements can be found by clicking this link.

When the Audeze LCD-1 headphones debuted a couple of months ago, I was deeply disappointed -- in myself. I’d reviewed the company’s products for years, but never really stopped to ponder why there were LCD-2s, LCD-3s, and LCD-4s, but no LCD-1s. Maybe I assumed it was an early attempt that never came to market. Regardless, the LCD-1s ($399 USD) are here -- but these are radically different headphones from what we’d normally expect of Audeze.