Dedicated to Headphones and Earphones

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Focal
DALI Epikore 11

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I’ve been reviewing headphones for a long time, and I’ve done quite a mix: in-ears, on-ears, over-ears, high end, low end. At one point or another, I’ve listened critically to every style of headphones at a huge range of price points.

Read more: Recalibrating the Ears

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A few weeks ago I reviewed the Audeze LCD-5s. They are, unquestionably, amazing headphones. Are they the best headphones I’ve ever heard? Honestly, I don’t know. Aural memory is a fickle thing, to be sure. I can only definitively say that compared to others I heard at the time, these were subjectively better.

Read more: Is There Such a Thing as a Perfect Pair of Headphones?

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If you’ve ever watched a documentary about the making of an album, where they show behind-the-scenes footage of the band recording and mixing the music, there’s something you’re always going to see. It’s the same thing if you watch someone recording sound for a TV show or movie. Basically, anywhere a professional is listening back to something live or recorded, you’ll see it: they use the same pair of headphones.

Read more: Everyone Should Own These Headphones

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What is the soundtrack to your life? This question, posed to me by Jorden Guth on a recent episode of the SoundStage! Audiophile Podcast, stopped me in my tracks. What a fantastic question, and one I’ve never been asked. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted someone to ask it. I would have been happy to follow that tangent for another hour, but wisely, producer Dennis Burger didn’t let us. I’d probably still be talking. I’ll touch on why this is such an interesting topic to me, but really, isn’t this important to most of us?

Read more: What is the Soundtrack to Your Life?

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I guess I should be thankful. In-flight entertainment has improved greatly over the last few years. That’s not to say it’s great, but it’s a lot better than before. Most flights will have enough of a variety of movies and shows to placate the mind for a few hours. It wasn’t that long ago that you’d be lucky to have a choice between three stale and forgettable movies, shown back to back.

Read more: The Endless Hassle of Connecting to In-Flight Entertainment

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Let’s start with the obvious: if you fly a lot, you should get some noise-canceling headphones. I’ll include trains and buses, too, since they can also be loud. NC headphones, the good ones anyway, can reduce that incessant droning that makes travel so tiresome. I never travel without them, but the style I travel with might surprise you. Personally, I prefer in-ear NC earphones. I’ve met countless frequent travelers who think I’m crazy. They also think this earphone preference is wild, as they’d never leave the house without some big, comfy over-ear headphones.

Read more: In-Ear vs. Over-Ear for Travel

  1. Traveling as an Audiophile
  2. Greetings!
  3. A Fond Farewell
  4. When Is the Amp Important?
  5. Evaluating the Knowles Preferred Response Curve
  6. Do We Really Need All These Target Curves?
  7. The Problem with Hearing Correction in Headphones
  8. RF: A Phantom Menace?
  9. Understanding Current
  10. The Big Mistake Many Headphone Makers Keep on Making
  11. How Consistent Is the Quality of Headphones and Earphones?
  12. David Chesky’s New New Revolution in Headphone Sound
  13. Why You Shouldn’t Always Rely on Measurements
  14. The Shocking Truth About Truck-Stop Earphones
  15. Are There Valid Objections to the Harman Curve?
  16. Is It Possible for Headphones to Sound Fast? (Or Slow?)
  17. The Four Things that Recording an Album Taught Me About Audio
  18. What Playing Music Taught Me About Audio
  19. Voicing Headphones, Part 3: Campfire Audio's Ken Ball and 64 Audio’s Vitaliy Belonozhko
  20. The #1 Red Flag in Audio Articles, Ads . . . and Everything Else
  21. How Not to Go Deaf from Headphone Listening
  22. What’s the Future of High-End Headphones?
  23. How Audio Writers Are Killing the Audio Industry
  24. Why Buying High-Quality Headphones Is a More Responsible Purchase
  25. Does It Make Sense to Demo Audio Over the Internet?
  26. The New Standard That Killed the Loudness War
  27. Headphones 2020: The Year in Review
  28. Three Cases Where Measurements Didn’t Work
  29. How Much Can We Really Tell From Listening?
  30. Balanced Armatures: Why You Might (or Might Not) Want Them
  31. The Coming Revolution in Headphone Sound Quality
  32. Can Accuracy in Music Reproduction Exist?
  33. The Biggest Lie in Audio
  34. Voicing Headphones, Part 2: HiFiMan’s Fang Bian and Focal’s Mégane Montabonel
  35. What Will the Next Generation of Headphones Be Like?
  36. How Far Have Headphones Come?
  37. Voicing Headphones, Part 1: PSB/NAD's Paul Barton and Dan Clark Audio's Dan Clark
  38. How Will Headphone Testing and Reviewing Change in the 2020s?
  39. What the AKG K371 Headphones Tell Us About "Slow Listening"
  40. Where Are We At With The Harman Curve?
  41. Why Headphone Amps Are More Interesting Than Speaker Amps
  42. 2019’s Most Important Headphone Presentation
  43. Noise Canceling Is Much More Complicated Than We Thought
  44. How Does Aging Affect Audio Perception?
  45. Noise-Canceling Headphones for 17 Cents?
  46. Is Chesky Dumping Binaural?
  47. Why My Fi Ain't Hi-Fi
  48. Latency: A New Concern for Audiophiles?
  49. How to Read Our Headphone Measurements
  50. Eardrum Suck: The Mystery Solved!
  51. Should Audio Gear be Considered Luxury Goods?
  52. Headphone Equalization Using Measurements
  53. Why Is It So Hard to Rate Headphones?
  54. Five Things Headphone Enthusiasts Get Right (and That the Two-Channel Guys Get Wrong)
  55. The Best Possible Way to Test Audio Products (and Why Most People Don't Do It)
  56. Will aptX Adaptive Improve Headphone Sound?
  57. Is the miniDSP EARS the Death of Headphone Measurement? Or its Savior?
  58. What Are Measurements Good For?
  59. How Much Noise Do Your Headphones Really Block?
  60. Why We're Launching "SoundStage! Solo"

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