Articles
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iFi Nano iCAN portable headphone amplifier
|In high-end audio, context can be everything. Directly following this review, I have also prepared a review of iFi Audio’s Nano iDSD portable DAC/headphone amplifier, in which I observe that the iDSD can be a ...read more -
Stax SR-009 / SRM-007tII 'Kimik'
|We have already touched upon the Stax SR-009. Our Publisher, Chris Martens, has a great deal of respect for the product, both when it is driven by Stax ‘energisers’ (Stax-speak for electrostatic headphone amplifiers) and ...read more -
Chord Electronics Hugo DAC/Headphone amplifier
|Are those people crazy?” asked a high-end audio/headphone enthusiast who had just learned the suggested retail price of Chord’s new Hugo portable DAC/headphone amplifier. “That’s an awfully steep price for a portable.” “It’s certainly not ...read more -
Audioquest Dragonfly v1.2
|We missed out on the first version of the Audioquest Dragonfly DAC, but the game-changing DAC recently saw a simultaneous price drop and upgrade. That makes it all but irresistible. The Dragonfly concept remains the ...read more -
Show Report: AXPONA 2014 - Headphones, etc.
|I spent this past weekend serving as the Hi-Fi+ emissary to the AXPONA 2014 show, held in the Westin O’hare Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, USA. For those of you not familiar with the show, let ...read more -
CEntrance HiFi-M8 DAC/Headphone amp
|The name CEntrance may not be familiar to many audiophiles just yet, but the odds are that at some point many of us have heard or enjoyed digital audio products that benefit from embedded CEntrance ...read more -
ADL X1 Portable DAC and Headphone Amplifier
|Someday in the future we will be able to carry round and play our entire musical collection, on a device smaller than credit card. And while the hardware isn’t that miniaturised yet, the £395 ADL ...read more -
Cavalli Audio Liquid Gold fully-balanced headphone amplifier
|Over the past several years Dr. Alex Cavalli, a gifted consulting physicist and engineer, quietly has been developing some of the most ambitious and best sounding headphone amplifiers ever made. First came the hybrid valve/solid-state ...read more -
Peachtree Audio nova125 integrated amplifier/DAC
|Some years ago, Peachtree recognized that a seismic shift in the high-end audio universe was at hand—a shift wherein PCs would step outside of their traditional roles as office tools to become full-fledged digital audio ...read more -
AMI Musik DDH-1 DAC/headphone amplifier
|AMI (Audio Music Interface)Musik is a young Japanese design, Korean build company. The compact DDH-1 is the first of two products out of the starting gates (the other being the DS5, a DSD supporting DAC ...read more -
First Look: HiFiMAN HM-901 high-resolution digital music player/DAC
|What follows is a “First Look” blog about a very special high-performance digital audio player that has, if truth be told, gone through one of the longest gestation periods in personal audio history. The product ...read more -
First Look: iFi iDSD nano DAC/headphone amp & iCAN nano headphone amp
|Early this year I wrote a blog about iFi Audio’s iCAN nano headphone amplifier (click here to read), but mentioned at the time that my findings were based on a pilot production sample and not ...read more -
First Listen: Chord Electronics Hugo portable high res DAC/headphone amp
|A Hi-Fi+ review project I’m working on at the moment involves the Chord Electronics Hugo portable high res DAC/headphone amp, which is priced at $2,395 in the US or £1,200 in the UK. In practice ...read more -
Head-Fi meet in Austin, TX
|It occurs to me that many readers familiar with the traditional world of speaker-centric high-end audio systems may be unaware that there is a rapidly evolving, parallel high-end audio universe that revolves around high-end headphones, ...read more -
CES 2014: Headphone, Earphones, and Related Electronics – Part 3
|If I had to name one broad high-end audio product category that is growing rapidly and for all the right reasons, that category would be Headphones, Earphones, and the specialised electronics needed to drive them. ...read more