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Deep in the heart of Tokyo is a legendary neighborhood. Well, to be fair, there are a lot of legendary neighborhoods in Tokyo, but this one has special interest for tech nerds like us. Its actual name is Akihabara, but it’s better known by its nickname: Electric Town. It has long been a hot spot for gadgets of all kinds, big and small. During the Japanese electronics boom of the 1980s, it was said you’d be able to find rare, often Japanese-market-only devices. You also might be able to nab gear that wouldn’t be available elsewhere in the world for months or maybe years.

Read more: The Rise and Fall and Maybe Rise Again of Akihabara Electric Town

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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

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

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