Dedicated to Headphones and Earphones

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PSB Imagine T65

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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.

Read more: The Formats Time Forgot

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It’s normal, understandable even, for younger people to be curious about things that happened before they were born. Raised in the zeitgeist of their elders, they have a natural interest in finding out more about the current and past culture and world. Jokes and stories in movies and TV, conversations between parents and family members, all reference things from their common world that are all new and foreign to someone new and foreign to the world.

Read more: The Return of the Cassette

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As expensive and elaborate headphones have risen in popularity, so too have headphone amplifiers. Big and small, cheap and pricey—it’s a huge market. Well, huge as far as tiny audiophile niches go. Which is to say, it’s a tiny market. I’d bet even the best-selling headphone amp would be a rounding error compared to AirPod sales.

Read more: Do You Need a Headphone Amp?

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As I write this in late December, the annual Consumer Electronics Show, CES, is a few weeks away. Every year the tech world descends upon Las Vegas to show off the latest, greatest, or at the very least, current. If I step back, I can understand why this kind of event would be appealing to people who are not part of the tech industry. If you’re fascinated by the latest tech, an industry-only event showing products that won’t appear in the wild for months or years would understandably be “your jam.”

Read more: The Highs and Lows of the Consumer Electronics Show

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As 2023 comes to an end, so does my first year at the helm of SoundStage! Solo. OK, technically it’s the end of my first 11 months, but let’s round up. This isn’t exactly a best-of-the-year story. It’s a few standouts from the year, along with a few headphones and gear I keep returning to between reviews. Let’s dive in.

Read more: 2023: A Year in Headphones (and Other Stuff)

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Noise canceling is kinda magic. Not literal magic—it’s just physics and electronic shenanigans, but the effect is magic. Being able to put something in or over your ears and have the world get significantly quieter? That’s brilliant. Unfortunately, as good as noise canceling has gotten, it’s still not perfect. “Canceling” is a bit of an oversell. In reality, “noise attenuation” or “noise reduction” would be more accurate. “Some stuff gets a little quieter” is even more descriptive, if less pithy.

Read more: Perfect Noise Canceling?

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

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