Articles
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Sony IER-Z1R Signature Series universal-fit earphone
|At the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2018 Sony announced two Signature Series personal audio products: the DMP-Z1 digital music player/headphone amp/DAC and the IER-Z1R universal-fit earphone reviewed here. New Sony Signature Series models don’t come ...read more -
Final B Series earphones: Part Two
|Last time, I wrote the first section of a two-part review of the new B-series (B1, B2, and B3) earphones from Final. This is part two of that review and it focuses on the B1—the ...read more -
Final B Series earphones: Part One
|Final is a Japanese personal audio specialist with a reputation for offering products exhibiting very high build quality, innovative designs, and fine sound quality. Lately, Final has been pushing both the envelopes for performance (through ...read more -
Coming Soon (maybe): Magnepan's compact '30.7 for Condos'
|I have just returned from an audio pilgrimage to Magnepan headquarters in White Bear Lake, Minnesota (a small community on the northeast side of the Minneapolis/St. Paul 'Twin Cities' area). What was the reason for ...read more -
MrSpeakers VOCE electrostatic headphones
|MrSpeakers is led by its headmaster Dan Clark, a keen-eared headphone enthusiast and an engineer’s engineer. The company takes its name from an earlier phase in Clark’s career where he served as an accomplished loudspeaker ...read more -
Meze Audio Empyrean planar magnetic headphone
|Until now the Romanian firm Meze Audio has been best known for its excellent and affordable 99 Classics headphones, which offer incredible value for money. However, for over two years Meze has been hard at ...read more -
Cayin N5iiS digital audio player
|Cayin is a Chinese high-end audio electronics manufacturer best known for its full-sized amplification and source components. In recent years, though, the firm has worked to create an ever-expanding range of personal audio components, including ...read more -
Chord Electronics Hugo TT 2 DAC/M Scaler upscaler
|As many music lovers know, the legend of Chord Electronics’ Hugo family of products started several years back with the first generation Hugo, which was a wildly overachieving portable headphone amp/DAC that took the marketplace ...read more -
NAD D3045 hybrid digital DAC/integrated amplifier
|Back in the 1970’s, NAD created what turned out to be a modest-looking, sensibly priced, wildly overachieving, and downright unlikely high-end giant killer in the form of its legendary 3020 integrated amplifier. The little amp ...read more -
Campfire Audio Atlas universal-fit earphones
|Campfire Audio entered the high-end earphone market in 2015 with three models (the Jupiter, Orion, and Lyra), which were followed in 2016 by four more models (the flagship Andromeda, Lyra II, Dorado, and Vega). Then, ...read more -
Quad ERA-1 planar magnetic headphones
|Back in the day, the first truly great loudspeakers I ever owned were the Quad ESL-57 electrostats and ever since I’ve viewed the brand with respect and even reverence. Frankly, those loudspeakers were so far ...read more -
Abyss AB-1266 Phi CC edition planar magnetic headphones
|The Abyss AB-1266 Phi edition planar-magnetic headphone represented an evolutionary improvement upon the original AB-1266 that first appeared in 2013. In fact my conclusion was that the AB‑1266 Phi edition took “an already superb headphone ...read more -
Schiit Audio Jotunheim Multibit headphone amp/preamp
|When Schiit Audio introduced its Jotunheim headphone amp/preamp in 2016, it was considered a technical marvel and a bargain. Jotunheim used a unique balanced circuit topology, called a ‘Pivot Point’ gain stage, developed by company ...read more -
Cayin iHA-6 headphone amp, iDAC-6 DAC, and iDAP-6 digital audio player
|If you jumped into an audiophile’s time machine and went back about a year and a half (to late 2016), you might have seen and heard two compact yet very impressive new components from Cayin ...read more -
iFi Audio Pro iDSD DAC/headphone amp/preamp/streamer
|Many of you know the backstory behind iFi Audio. In essence, the firm is a spin-off from the well-regarded British high‑end audio company Abbingdon Music Research (AMR) and iFi’s mission is to make AMR-like technology ...read more