Dedicated to Headphones and Earphones

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Let’s start with the obvious: if you fly a lot, you should get some noise-canceling headphones. I’ll include trains and buses, too, since they can also be loud. NC headphones, the good ones anyway, can reduce that incessant droning that makes travel so tiresome. I never travel without them, but the style I travel with might surprise you. Personally, I prefer in-ear NC earphones. I’ve met countless frequent travelers who think I’m crazy. They also think this earphone preference is wild, as they’d never leave the house without some big, comfy over-ear headphones.

Read more: In-Ear vs. Over-Ear for Travel

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The worst thing to happen to me while traveling was getting robbed on a night train in Italy.

Read more: Traveling as an Audiophile

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Don’t be alarmed. I am not Brent. Don’t worry. He’s fine, but he has stepped down from SoundStage! Solo. You’ll still see his byline once in a while, though. He, along with founder Doug Schneider and Editor in Chief Jeff Fritz, have decided to hand the reins over to me. A decision steeped in genius. Or folly. Bit of both? We shall see.

Read more: Greetings!

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I’m sad to say this will be my last column for SoundStage! Solo. I’ve accepted a full-time staff position at the consumer-review site Wirecutter (for whom I’ve worked part-time for several years), and won’t be able to do any audio-related freelance work going forward. If everything goes as scheduled, my last review will post on January 20, and my last measurements sometime in February.

Read more: A Fond Farewell

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Numerous as misunderstandings are in the world of audio, I’d guess that in consumer audio, there’s nothing more misunderstood than the amplifier. I think that’s because many audio aficionados base their understanding of amps less on technical knowledge than on what they’ve read in subjective reviews, where writers—almost none of whom possess substantial knowledge of amp design—are typically encouraged to sling exaggerated, exotic adjectives to make what’s often a rather generic product sound like a transformative experience.

Read more: When Is the Amp Important?

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As I reported last month, the number of target curves for headphone and earphone response is growing. Honestly, I’m a bit dismissive of some of these curves. I’m fine with it if people like them, but based on my decades of communication with readers, I’m skeptical of the idea that any target response is a surefire prescription for listener satisfaction—although they certainly can serve as reference standards against which other models can be compared.

Read more: Evaluating the Knowles Preferred Response Curve

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

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