Dedicated to Headphones and Earphones
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
Guess what. Everyone’s biased. The people who say they aren’t biased are definitely biased. The key to navigating the world is trying to understand what someone’s bias is, perhaps determining why, and keeping that in mind when you’re evaluating their opinion. This could definitely be about politics (you are not immune to propaganda), but instead I’ll stay in my wheelhouse and talk about how this impacts audio reviews.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
I recently appeared on the Audio Unleashed podcast to complain. Okay, that wasn’t the only reason, but my segment started out as a rant about how whenever people talk about popular music it inevitably devolves into explaining how much they dislike Taylor Swift. Hosts Dennis Burger and Brent Butterworth objected to my reductive complaint, which was fine, because what I really wanted to talk about was something else, something that endlessly fascinates me: Do music tastes change as we age? Do our tastes, especially our favorites, get solidified in our teens or early 20s? Is there a sort of “Era of Discovery” early on that sets our tastes in stone for the rest of our lives?
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
A little over three years ago, I asked what was better for traveling: in-ear or over-ear headphones. I was then, and still am, firmly in Camp Earbud. I am a strong proponent of traveling light, plus it’s a lot easier to fall asleep on an earbud than on an over-ear headphone. I can understand if you disagree, but for the sake of this test, we’re going all-in on in-ears. Specifically, the flagship noise-canceling models from the big three: Apple, Bose, and Sony.
Read more: What Are the Best Noise-Canceling Earbuds for Traveling?
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
Bluetooth version 6.0 is here. Well, kinda here. It’s not actually here, but pieces of it are arriving slowly. Let’s just say that it’s rolling out. Announced a few months ago and available in a handful of products right now, Bluetooth 6.0 is the next iteration of everyone’s favorite (by default) low-power, short-distance wireless tech. Unlike new iterations of some other ubiquitous technologies (looking at you, HDMI), this update actually has a lot of useful features.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
I’m writing this from a restaurant in Paris. That’s not boasting. I’m at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, and the restaurant is actually part of the food court. Also, I hate Las Vegas. This is my 20-somethingth Consumer Electronics Show, and this place never gets any more pleasant to visit. Oh well. There are worse places to be. Here’s my curated and collated list of news from the CES 2026 trade show that you, dear SoundStage! Solo reader, might be curious about.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Morrison
The SoundStage! Network has just announced the winners of our Product of the Year awards, along with three new recipients of our Outstanding Achievement awards. Cruise on over to SoundStage! Hi-Fi for a full list of winners, or check out the video presentation on our YouTube channel. Among the award winners are two headphones and two earphones, one each in the Outstanding Performance and Exceptional Value categories, and all reviewed during 2025 on SoundStage! Solo. Suffice it to say they’re all great.
- Spotify Freezes Over
- A Eulogy for Great Headphones
- The Rise and Fall and Maybe Rise Again of Akihabara Electric Town
- Behold the Greatest Store on Earth
- Do You Really Need Hi-Rez Audio?
- Is There Space for Another Music-Streaming Service?
- Bluetooth in the Sky
- The Power of Nostalgia
- Fire and Music
- MEMS!
- Headphones 2025 and Beyond
- Don’t Call It a Gift Guide
- Do You Care About Features?
- The Constancy of Change (Goodbye, Sound & Vision)
- Is Accuracy the Only Option?
- The Opposite of Headphones
- The Death and Immediate Rise of MQA (Again)
- How Terrible Is Temu?
- The Delightful Weirdness of Open Earbuds
- The Formats Time Forgot
- 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"
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