Headphones Nao

Time won’t stand still! RUSH, like most Canadians, are always right 🙂 Another week flew by. No big news this week but plenty of review action. I am including a mix of video and text, since different people have different preferences, and read this at work (text is better) or at home where the Wifi rivers flow unimpeded…

FORUMS

On the Meta front, the very busy Headfi forums received an unpopular and confusing forum software update. The forum founder posted a detailed update explaining why. TL;DR: the company making their previous forum software is shutting down. Back to USENET? 🙂

NEWSY

Xiaomi confessed to Android Central why they removed the headphone jack from their new Mi 6 smartphone, giving USB-C audio their vote of confidence.

Continue reading “This Week in Headphoolia #11 (up to 5/7/17)”

Time sure does fly faster and faster. Another week is gone, so here’s another round-up. I promise I will have more content in-between the round-ups… one of these days 🙂 Theme music while preparing this round-up: Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express” album, FLAC (rip from CD), with the Philips SHP-9500S (review is coming, just like the “Winds of Winter” is coming; unboxing already posted) through the Fiio X1 DAP.

These round-ups are intended to be a fun/funny round-up of the action, but they are not intended to be comprehensive. I can’t post every review, every new headphone announcement, every news item. That’s a full time job ~ please feel free to load up the Patreon if you want that 🙂

SENNHEISER HD820 LEAKS

Sennheiser has unleashed a boatload of HD 5XX and HD 4XX headphones, they even teased with a special edition of the HD 6XX series at Massdrop, but it looks like they are not done. A leak spotted the mention of a Sennheiser HD 820 headphone in marketing material.

Continue reading “This Week in Headphoolia #10: Sennheiser HD820 leaks (up to 4/30/17)”

Another week flew by, another week my glorious procrastinations produced zero reviews on the blog 🙂 But we have a new installment of the weekly round-up, covering up to Sunday 4/24/17. The big drama story of the week was a lawsuit against Bose for allegedly harvesting and selling customer data through the Bose Connect app (iTunes, GooglePLAY). A lot of the headlines on mass media and clickbait-y websites said things like “your headphones are spying on you” which is not true ~ the app is spying on you, which is worse because it has access to more data 🙂 But the story was not big enough to make it to the Techmeme headlines 🙂

BIG BOSE is LISTENING

The story broke out on Reuters and was filed in the state of Illinois. Innerfidelity downplays the importance of this lawsuit since almost everybody else does it, but on the other hand, if we don’t hold companies accountable for data hoarding without permission, they will not stop doing it or at least won’t give us more control ~ or better yet, give us some profit sharing from whatever they make from our data and social graphs. Since they have very granular data on each person, they can easily calculate our profit share 🙂

Continue reading “This Week in Headphoolia #9: Bose app lawsuit and more (up to 4/24/17)”

We have a new installment of our quasi-weekly round-up that is “This Week in Headphoolia”. Here we go…

CAN JAM 2017 Part II

We posted a lot of CanJAM 2017 (So Cal edition) action in the previous round-up but more things came out since them. These are some of them…

+ AudioHeads visit Noble Audio (3 min video)
+ AudioHeads visit ZMF (3 min video)

If you missed it last week, there’s a 1-hour video from Headfi previewing the action, YouTube-embedded below…

Continue reading “This Week in Headphoolia #8 (week ending 4/16/17)”

Welcome to a new edition to “This Week in Headphoolia”, a round-up of some of the action in the world of head-audio. This installment covers 1.5 weeks instead of one week because my Sunday nap turned into a hibernation session 🙂 You can find all previous (and future) installments in the Headphoolia archives.

CanJAM 2017 SoCAL (Southern California)

Headphones don’t have big trade shows like some other electronics products, but they have a variety of local and hyperlocal events and meet-ups. One of the bigger ones is CanJAM SoCal and the 2017 edition took place last week. If you want SPOILERS about everything here’s 1-Hour video from Headfi.

If you’ve never been to one such event, here are some YouTube videos to give you a first-hand look at what goes on, the first two are YouTube-embedded below…

If you only watch one video, this 7-minute video by PhotoTristan gives you a good walk-about feel for the show.

Continue reading “This Week In Headphoolia #7 (up to 4/11/17)”

Another week flew by, and the tax deadline is now getting real, even with the extra three days! Speaking of time, you can read all previous editions in the Headphoolia archives. If you have any recommendations or suggestions of what to include or exclude in these round-ups, please leave a comment or opine on Twitter.

LEARNINGS

Tyll of Innerfidelity and Headroom fame appeared eight times so far at TWiT’s “Home Theater Geeks” (HTG) with Scott Wilkinson, so they are not ignoring headphones! Of more general audio learnings interest, HTG had two back to back videos in late March 2017 with Paul Hales (of Pro Audio Technology fame) talking about audio science, EQ curves, speakers, and such. This is not headphone-specific, but there’s plenty of audio/sound talk in over 2.5 hours of total runtime. You can find these two episodes using this pre-filled YouTube Search or look up episodes #345 and #346.

Sony is partnering with The Mother of Dragons Android (The Googleleesi) to bake in their LDAC technology into the new version of Android (“Android O” (the letter, not zero)). LDAC promises up to three times as much data as the more common SBC and does not have to perform a down-conversion. So this is a good time to read a primer on LDAC at Sony’s. There are plenty of charts over there too. Already, Sony has a trio of compatible products, the MDR-1000X headphones, Walkman DAPs, and one of their Xperia smartphones.

Continue reading “This Week in Headphoolia (6th edition)”

All apologies for the delay. This is supposed to be a weekly round-up, not a 2.5-weekly 🙂 So here we go with a super-sized version:

We have some recurring segments, news-related action, review round-ups, opinions and audio-learnings. I am trying to keep the format fluid, so not all segments will appear every week. Especially in this case where we have two weeks worth of material, the Forums and Streaming Services will be included in next week’s edition 🙂

NEW HEADPHONES

Sennheiser wants you to know they can be fashionable too! In a new partnership with Dior Homme, they have revealed four stylized and color-matched headphone products in a totally non-Beats black/red color scheme. A home setup with an amplifier and over-ears, along with a portable setup with bluetooth and earphones. Get hyped up for them at …Hype Beast 🙂

The brand new V-Moda Crossfade Wireless 2 (second generation) model may have inadvertently revealed the price range of what Qualcomm charges (or how much it costs a manufacturer) to use the apt-X bluetooth technology. In a move that will create some confusion among potential buyers, V-Moda’s new Crossfade II are not all created the same. They are available in three color schemes, but only one of them supports Qualcomm’s Apt-X, the Rose Gold color scheme and it costs $20 more than the other two, $350 versus $330. Interestingly, it is Apt-X, not “Apt-X HD”, which probably costs more to license 🙂

Continue reading “This Week In Headphoolia (5th edition)”

Another week flew by, which means it’s time for a new edition of “This Week in Headphoolia”, a light-hearted attempt to summarize some of the action of the week that was in the world of headphones. You can find all previous editions in the Headphoolia Archives.

We have our usual segments, news-related action, review round-ups, a dive into the forums, more streaming service updates, and some opinions and audio-learnings.

NEWSY!

Bose is getting under lawyer fire. Doppler Labs are suing them for appropriating some of their technology for the Bose Here earphones. Bose even appropriated the name. According to the allegations, one Bose employee was among the first to scoop them up on Kickstarter. More at Business Insider.

Eight billion dollar deals have a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to clear, but it looks like the Samsung-Harman is officially official. So now Samsung owns the AKG, Harman Audio, JBL, and Yurbuds headphone brands.

Continue reading “This Week In Headphoolia, 4th Edition”

We now have Episode #3 of “This Week in Headphoolia”, a lighthearted round-up of things of potential interest. You can find all previous editions in the Headphoolia Archives.

In this edition, we round-up some of the reactions to the new Monoprice M1060, we take a look at some of the latest news-related action, updates on two popular streaming services, and round-up some of the many reviews posted the last week or so.

2017: A SPACE ODYSSEY – THE MONOLITH DISCOVERS US!

Line up for the new hype train! While the Monoprice M560 continue to fly under the radar, the brand new Monolith M1060 over-ear planar-magnetics have generated enough interest and buzz, so much so that they are now out of stock until Tax Day 2017 (mid-April).

Here is a sampling of the action across the interwebs on these open-back critters:

Continue reading “This Week In Headphoolia, 3nd Edition”