This Week In Headphoolia #13 (ending 5/21/17)

Another week flew by, and with it we have a new edition of our weekly round-up. You can find previous editions (and future ones in the future) in the Headphoolia archives

LEARNINGS

JDS Labs took to their own blog to opine that their new Element is not an O2 in a shiny shell. Pictures, charts and data are included!

What is Isolation? The SoundGuys YouTube channel take a 5-minute stab at explaining it.

If you missed Metal571’s live YouTube Q&A, fear not, it is saved on YouTube (except for the Live Chat, which YouTube does not save). You can watch all two hours of it at any time you want.

How does it look when you get in-ear impressions? Ultimate Ears has a 1-minute video of “The Voice” contestants getting impressions for their very own UE
earphones. Don’t tell that to the audiophiles, they’ll start flooding the music contests just for the free custom IEMs 😉

Twit.TV’s “Home Theater Geeks” has another headphone-related episode! This week’s episode featured Darrin Fong and his Headphone Virtualization software, “Out of Your Head”. You can also find it YouTube-embedded below…

OVER/On-EAR REVIEWS

Flagship type products always generate more curiosity-interest than buying-interest, so feed that curiosity with a new 10 minute video by AORNIC on swapping the earpads between the Focal Elear and Utopia!

Meanwhile the flagship measurement saga continues at Innerfidelity with two updates this week, update #1 and update #2.

More action from this week:

+ Beyerdynamic DT1990 PRO video review by METAL 571 (12 minutes)

+ Sony MDR-Z1R video review by Deez Canz (16 minutes)

EARPHONE REVIEWS

+ Fiio E5 earphones by The Headphone List

+ Brainwavz B200 review at Headfonia

+ Seahf AWK-009 review at Carrot Reviews (text only; watch out VE Monks!)

+ 1More quad driver two page write-up at Audio Head

+ Aedle ODS-1 write up at The Headphone List

DAPs and DACs and AMPs and SUCH

+ AmpsAndSound Kenzie review at Earphiles

+ Oppo Sonica DAC at Headfonics

+ Hidizs AP60 review at Headfonics

+ A&K AK320 DAP write up at Headphone Guru

+ 12 minute video review of the Cayenne (okay, Cayin) N3 DAP by Porta FI

HEADPHONE ADVENTURES

“Lachnlan Likes a Thing” is back with a new video, a headphone adventure, a safari if you must, visiting headphone stores and talking headphones in this new 26 minute video, also YouTube-embedded below:

STREAMING SERVICES

One thing that is working to undermine streaming services and drive people back to the torrents is this whole nonsense with exclusives everywhere. What’s the point of paying a monthly fee for a subscription when most of the most highly anticipated releases are scattered in six different music subscription services? No one’s gonna subscribe to more than one, or may be two, definitely not all of them.

So it is good news that both record labels and subscription services are cutting out the nonsense 🙂 It wasn’t that hard!

This was one of the smartest ways to raise awareness in an organic fashion, the Shazaam music recognition app simulated Alzheimer’s by forgetting that it actually recognized a scanned song.

Meanwhile the competition of AI in music recommendations continues to heat up as Spotify scooped up a Paris based AI music startup.

TROUBLE with TRIBBLES

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is not the only thing exploding. An older pre-Apple version of the Beats Studio really exploded in a flight causing actual physical damage to the headphone wearer. These took AAA batteries, which makes it more curious. Not sure if it was using rechargeable or single-use AAA batteries when it exploded.