New Headphones at IFA 2016

Time flies and the annual IFA 2016 has arrived. This post will track some of the many new headphones that are revealed at the trade show and elsewhere in parallel with the trade show (smaller manufacturers may not be able to afford a big trade show presence with fanfare and presentations and such, so they have their new launches at home).

LATEST UPDATE: this post will be updated many times as I find and add more and more headphones… TIP: if you are not seeing the correct video embeds, do a hard refresh of the page (eg CTRL-F5 on Firefox)…

TABLE of CONTENTS

The following have been posted below in this long post:

  • Apple: Goodbye Headphone Jack, Hello Lightning, and Wireless Earpods and new Beats 3 and X
  • LG V20 “Phone as DAP”
  • Sony Walkman NW-A30
  • Beyerdynamic Byron Earphone Trio
  • Sony Signature line Head-Amp and two new Walkman DAPs
  • Schiit Jotunheim non-DAC/amp DAC/amp
  • the Sennheiser consumer models (4/2 series)
  • RHA two in-ears and a DAC/amp
  • Sony MDR-Z1R flagship
  • Audeze Planar In-Ears (Sine and i3)
  • four new Sennheiser HD-5xx headphones
  • B&W P7 Bluetooth
  • Sony MDR-1000X ANC/BT
  • Bragi “The Headphone” and IBM Watson co-operation

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Using Back To School Doorbusters as Cheap Earphone (and Headphone) cases

From late June until September every year, many of the big chain stores across the country run a variety of “Back to School” sales. Some of the items that are featured as doorbusters or on sale or as freebies can be repurposed by the thrifty as …earphone and headphone cases.

Having said that, the price of the headphones has to match the price of the doorbuster “cases”. Not a good idea to put $1000 Custom IEMs in a $1 box, but $10 earphones, why not? 🙂

$1 Office Depot Clearance (more details on these coming later)

As of mid-September 2016, Office Depot and Max has put some of their house-brand supplies on clearance for $1 each. These could make great earphone containers.

I plan to post about each one of the above here, “modeling” with earphones inside, but until, then you can get a brief description of each one of the six boxes at this post. UPDATE: they are also available via the Office Depot website.

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Unboxing the Chromecast Audio (text and pictures only)

This is the first in (hopefully) a series of posts on the Chromecast Audio. It is a practical text and pictures unboxing of the device. As ridiculous as unboxings may feel to some, they are the most objective part of a review since they don’t depend on one’s ears or biology or audio-philosophy or musical preferences 🙂

The packaging is practical and recyclable, nothing fancy but pretty good considering this is a $35 item. Here’s the front and the back, the ruler for size purposes.

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Skullcandy Grind Wireless: What’s Inside The Box? (Unboxing Pictures and Text)

If you are a fan of bluetooth headphones, in this post, we use pictures and text (no audio, no video) to show you what’s included with the Skullcandy Grind Wireless (bluetooth) headphones and close-ups of the important parts. A review will come later. Given the nature of audio and human perception, physiology and psychology, one could argue that an unboxing is the most objective part of a review 🙂

The Box

This is the front of the box, followed by the side of the box that describes the main features. The “12 hour battery” is a testable specification, something I’ll be paying attention to during the review later on.

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New Headphones at CES 2016

How time goes by! CES 2016 is already here, so this is a good opportunity to summarize some of the many new headphones that got revealed over there. CES is a tech show, so the announcements tend to lean more on the tech side of things, while more esoteric audiophile products tend to get revealed at related events. But that’s only a blanket rule of thumb! This time around we are grouping the new products by category, not by manufacturer…

NOTE: this post includes embedded YouTube videos by the manufacturers. Often, the hype is strong with manufacturer videos, so take everything you see and hear with a grain of (sea) salt!

NOTE #2: this article is a work in progress… More and more will be added in the next few hours and days…

LATEST ADDITIONS: added various Audio Technica products… Apologies for the delays in updates…

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New Headphones at CES 2015

CES 2015 is here and while the focus *cough* hype *cough* is on wearables and the “internet of things”, there is action in the world of headphones as well, not just ones “touching” the hype 🙂 There’s wooden Denon, new Monster flagship, more from Philips, lambskin BeoPlay and a brand new four figure audiophile Sony Walkman (among other things).

This is just the beginning, more will be added in the next few days as I go through all the CES 2015 action. If you need a refresher or a comparison point, here’s our round-up of the CES 2014 action.

Latest Update: 1/20/15 at 11:57pm EST – added Sennheiser Momentum M2, along with Bluetooth versions of Momentum and Urbanite, and new RS xx5 wireless series…

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Yamaha EPH-M100 In-Ears Review Diary

We now have our first review diary for in-ear headphones, starting with the new Yamaha EPH-M100. This is posted diary-style, the latest updates go on top. This format speeds up sharing my impressions, versus waiting until the complete review is finished, which could take weeks/months – I guess I caught the GRRM bug of ever-sprawling and ever-expanding 🙂 The Holidays caused a delay in the start of this, but here we go…

For comments, questions, corrections, suggestions, and such, please feel free to use the contact form or leave a comment below.

How well does the 3-button in-line remote work?

On Apple devices (iPods, iPads, iPhones) all is well since this is an MFi device. There are three buttons, a Volume UP, a Volume DOWN, and the Middle Button. The up and down increase and decrease volume as expected. The Middle Button switches between Play and Pause with a One press. Two presses take you to the Next track. Three presses take you to the Previous track. These are quick click-click-click presses, not leisurely ones. If they are not behaving as such, before you declare them lemons, check the Settings of your app or device, some apps allow you to override the default behavior or may have default presets that are different. For example, in some Podcast apps or Audiobook apps the Next/Previous functionality may be mapped to 30 second jumps forward and backward instead.

On Windows Phone and Firefox OS, none of the buttons work, it pains me to say. I used the Nokia Lumia 520 running Windows 8.1 (Xbox Music, 7digital, Audible) and the ZTE Open Firefox OS smartphone. Music still plays of course, but there is no response at all to the buttons. You have to adjust volume from the device.

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Yamaha EPH-M100 In-Ears: What’s Inside The Box? (Unboxing Pictures and Text)

The $100 in-ears headphone market is a busy spot, with many companies offering alternatives, including the frequently recommended Shure SE-125s. Yamaha too is joining the party with the brand new EPH-M100 In-Ears, and they are already shipping from Amazon.com and other places. This post is a pictures-and-text unboxing. A separate “Review Diary” (like the one we did for the Shure SRH-145) will go live a couple of days later…

The box is 8×5 inches, and around 2 inches tall. You can see its front face (on a blue background) below…

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Shure SRH-145 On-Ear Closed-Back Review Diary

Welcome to this new semi-exciting experiment! A headphone review diary. Instead of waiting a few weeks to post my impressions, I am posting them “diary style”. The latest updates go on top, so if you are reading this for the first time, start reading from the bottom (not that there are any spoilers). So the subject/victim of our first experiment are the brand new Shure SRH 145 closed-back on-ear headphones. You can find their specs at the bottom of this post in bright orange (that’s the back of their box).

If you have any questions, feel free to use the contact form or leave a comment below…

Dec 5: Keyboard Test

All apologies for the delay in updates, a number of factors contributed. This time I used them to play the music keyboard (61-key Casio). Overall, I did not find anything offensive in the piano sounds. The only audio area that stood out in terms of issues was the first few keys of the Acoustic Bass faux-instrument. The SRH-145 simply did not have the rumble and impact as the Sony MDR-V6 bass (which is a bigger and more expensive studio headphone). I’m guessing most people use the piano sounds on a keyboard anyway? There is a certain level of oddity playing a guitar or bass or saxophone or drums on a keyboard 🙂

While they do not have the benefits of over-ears, they are fairly lightweight and comfortable for a practice or play or improv session, and they are not picky on 1/4″ adapters (they don’t come with one – see unboxing – but they worked with random standard 1/4″ adapters I randomly grabbed).

Obviously playing the keyboard is not their intended use, but they are serviceable in this fashion, in other words, you don’t have to buy another pair of headphones (unless you want to or you are a more advanced player/student with a more advanced piano/keyboard). They are certainly an upgrade over the basic $10-ish headphones included with some headphone bundles (the aforementioned Casio was bundled with a Nady pair that fell apart without much use).

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Shure SRH145 Headphones – What’s Inside The Box? (Unboxing Pictures and Text)

Shure stopped resisting the temptation and finally joined the world of consumer headphones, featuring a trio of lightweight portable on-ears. I just received the brand new SRH-145 closed-back on-ears (purchased from Amazon.com), and opened the box and took a few pictures while they were fresh and factory-clean (most pictures were taken on a blue background)…

The SRH 145s have an orange box, cardboard, can be disassembled, and of course recycled…

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Inside the box we find:

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