Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 20 February 2019

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When I first encountered Focal’s new Stellia closed-back headphones, I was exhausted and eager to hit the road. It was last month at CES 2019, in an early-morning, press-embargoed meeting scheduled right before my departure. Figuratively speaking, the imaginary sounds of my car calling out to me from the Mirage hotel parking lot drowned out most of Focal’s pitch. Regardless, I left with a review sample, and after living with the Stellias for a month, and soliciting the opinions of our usual listening panelists, I really don’t care what that original pitch was -- because I think my reaction to these headphones might be a little different from the way the company will position them.

Read more: Focal Stellia Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 10 February 2019

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I’m always skeptical when an audio company appropriates an unused but historic brand. In too many cases, the company simply slaps the brand onto whatever generic product it can scrounge up out of Shenzhen, with little effort at design or tuning. That’s why I was so surprised when I witnessed the rebirth of the KLH brand at the 2018 CEDIA Expo. The company’s new lines of speakers seemed innovative (for speakers, anyway) and well engineered. I was surprised again at CES 2019 when the company launched two headphone models -- one of them, the Ultimate Ones, clearly targeted at people stepping up from mass-market headphones. That’s a gutsy move for what’s really a completely new company.

Read more: KLH Ultimate One Headphones

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Written by: S. Andrea Sundaram

Created: 01 February 2019

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Four score and three years ago, Peter J. Walker brought forth, on the island of Great Britain, an audio company called S.P. Fidelity Sound Systems, which would later take the name Quad Electroacoustics. With its many successful products over the years -- especially the original ESL electrostatic loudspeaker (later nicknamed the ESL 57) and its derivatives -- it’s safe to say that Quad is one of the most venerable British hi-fi companies. But while in the past decade many traditional hi-fi brands have come out with headphone products, Quad’s only entry in that race has been a headphone amplifier, the PA-One. That changes with the subject of this review, the ERA-1: full-size, over-ear, open-backed headphones ($799 USD).

Read more: Quad ERA-1 Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 20 January 2019

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Headphone enthusiasts differ from the traditional stereo enthusiasts in many ways, but the most extreme difference involves transducer sensitivity. While many stereo enthusiasts feel that the best sound is achieved by using low-powered amplifiers with high-sensitivity speakers, many headphone enthusiasts feel that the best sound is achieved using high-powered amplifiers with low-sensitivity headphones, such as the new HiFiMan HE6ses.

Read more: HiFiMan HE6se Headphones

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Written by: Brent Butterworth

Created: 01 January 2019

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Thanks largely to two relatively new companies, Audeze and HiFiMan, planar-magnetic headphones now dominate discussion of high-end headphones. But I’ve owned a set of planar-magnetic headphones for about 20 years and didn’t even realize it until a few years ago. They’re Fostex T20s, which I bought in the late 1990s to monitor mixes of my multitrack recordings of jazz and folk groups. The T20s are still available as the T20RPs. They’re part of Fostex’s pro line, but because so many audiophiles use them, Fostex has released a more consumer-oriented version of its pro headphones, under the model number T60RP ($299.99 USD).

Read more: Fostex T60RP Headphones