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Featured Articles & Reviews
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Status Acoustics Decimo Review
Speaker companies are a dime a dozen these days in a market flooded with gimmicky products that claim improved fidelity via unverifiable audio tweaks or using exotic cables to achieve their full potential. It is a rarity to find a company that doesn't give into these tactics to market a substandard product. Instead Status Acoustics took the high road by building these no nonsense speakers with some of the finest components available making them to this day a benchmark product unrivaled in performance.
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Emotiva ER 5.0 Speaker System Review
Emotiva, the maker of affordable amps and processors, has stepped into the speaker world in a big way. With the help of the famous loudspeaker designer Vance Dickason, they have put together a 5.0 package at a price that seems almost too good to be true. These speakers sound great, the dipole surrounds are amazing, and the boundary and tweeter adjustments mean that they'll fit almost any room. The downside? Just look at them…
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Recent Headphone Reviews
The Beats by Dr. Dre headphones from Monster claim to be designed for today's digital music. And you know that product with Grammy Award- winning artist and producer Dr. Dre should handle Hip Hop and R&B with aplomb. These headphones make a statement with their styling, features, and Monster price tag. Are they worth it?
The Denon AH-NC732 noise canceling headphones join a crowded category of products that frequent flyers are finding they cannot live without. It seems that only a few years ago your only choice for active noise canceling headphones was from the four-letter marketing machine, and you were paying top dollar for a mediocre product and lots of advertising. Denon took it's time entering the fray, but they have delivered some strong competition with the introduction of the AH-NC732 headphones.
The Denon AH-C551K represents the middle of the pack of Denon's recently introduced line of in-ear headphones. Denon brings their reputation for high fidelity to the table with these in-ears that feature an 11 mm Nedodymium magnet driver that provides fantastic bass response. While they sound great, the fit will depend on how well you tolerate earbud-type headphones.
The Creative Aurvana Live! headphones are designed for people who are looking for a comfortable and full ranged headphone that is priced right. They are lightweight and are equally suited for your two-channel rig at home or your iPod, as long as you don't mind a big set of traditional cans on your ears.
The Klipsch Image earphones are proported to be the "world's smallest high performance earphones," and there is no doubt that they are unlike anything I have seen. I remember seeing them at CEDIA last year and thinking that they would probably be yet another overpriced, mediocre sounding earbud for the iPod. Recently Klipsch sent me a pair and I have been using the Image earphones for a couple of months now, and I am pleased to tell you that I had it all wrong.
Creative recently sent me their Aurvana X-Fi noise-canceling headphones to evaluate, and after a few flights and some time to listen to them, I can tell you that they worthy contenders if you are considering taking the plunge. The Aurvana X-Fi is a great product that accomplishes it's intended purpose. The noise-canceling technology works well, and the X-Fi processing improves most recordings. The Creative Aurvana X-Fi headphones are a huge sonic improvement over earbuds, even without the noise-canceling or X-Fi effects. But, you pay a price. These are heavy, full-sized headphones.
The Jays line of earphones consists of the j-JAYS, an entry level model at $49.99 MSRP, the d-JAYS in the middle of the line, and the q-JAYS at $179 MSRP. The Jays line-up also offers the BlueStreamer stereo Bluetooth adapter and the m-Jays, which is designed to allow for use of aftermarket headphones with mp3-capable cell phone devices. Packaging is nice but not ostentatious. Fit-and-finish seems top rate.
In this column, on a more-or-less monthly basis, I’ll focus my attention on headphones, portable player accessories, and most importantly content. Each column will feature an in-depth, subjective review of a piece of gear, a “teaser” for the following month’s hardware, and an exploration of the various music, songs, words, pictures and podcasts available so readily (and often for free) from the great experiment known as the Internet. In this monthly dose of my tales from the Road, I review the Shure E4c earbuds, the Airhead headphone amplifier and Gigabag all courtesy of our friends at www.Headphone.com.
Nothing is worse than having an “epiphany” type moment with a particular song/album just to have your significant other ask you to turn it down. It is times like these that you simply MUST have a good set of cans. Denon is trying to break into this very competitive market with a new group of cans that range in price from $150 to $700. The AH-D1000’s are an “on ear” (supra-aural) model that is priced right for someone that wants quality but doesn’t have unlimited funds. At $150, they definitely are above the impulse buy price range and elevate the purchase to one of “bang for buck”.
It’s not often that I review headphones as most of the models I’ve heard aren’t much to write home about. However, upon speaking with Ivy Scull of HeadRoom, she sold me with a pretty convincing argument about the sonic joys of a quality set of cans (headphones that is). I asked her to send me a reference performance headphone system that is also comfortable to wear. I found the Sennheiser HD 600’s to be a truly amazing set of cans. They sounded great with virtually anything I attached to them, but reached their full potential with the best electronics unlike any other headphones I have listened too. Their comfort was of equal measure to their sonic performance which in my experience is a rare balance to find in headphones. Sennheiser’s unprecedented reputation for headphone excellence is well warranted and secure.
Headphones
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