The MyST Nail series is aberrant among modern earphones. It looks cheap but it isn’t. It fits like an Etymotic ER4. It’s accessory set is its ear pads. Its cables are fixed. In a market focused on most everything that it isn’t, Nail isn’t a product that sells itself.
Read moreAudio Head: Noble Audio Savanna giveaway
[Update] this post has been edited for taste.
Audio Head doing a snazzy giveaway of a Noble Audio Savanna. Nice.
Follow the jump for giveaway details: An Audio-Head Giveaway – The Noble Savanna IEM
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Andromeda and the demands of the opinion cult
Insanely-active headfi user, moedawg140’s objection to incessant reader demands to compare TOTL earphone against TOTL rivals, is spot on. A non-engineering review is written from opinion. No matter how assiduous, extended comparisons between earphone A and earphone B reveal nothing but personal bias; more colloquially, they reveal that we all hear different. Obsessing over and acquiescing to reader demands is a never-ending, soul-destroying campaign of self-flagellation and risk. Self flagellation: kowtowing to a single demand necessarily insinuates more of the same in the future. Risk: maintaining a fleet of TOTL earphones, amps, DACs, or DAPs, is expensive both to the wallet and to the attic.
Read moreCampfire Audio Andromeda - excitement engine
Achebe oversimplified things. Some things fall apart. Others compound into something exquisite. Baby bum-smooth Andromeda is as polished next to Jupiter as Jupiter is against a pre-production version of itself. It is my - perhaps self-serving - opinion that the two earphone manufacturers most violently busting through the limits of industrial manufacturing and branding ceilings are Campfire Audio and Noble Audio.
Read moreUnder Ryuzoh's mod knife: my Plenue D and AK100 mkii
In Ryuzoh’s clutches are a Plenue D and an AK100 mkii, mine both. The latter is scheduled to return by 22 May along with my newly-balanced Chord Mojo. The former- well, that depends.
Read moreFujiya Avic 2016 Spring Show: racks, bikes, and stacks
For most of Fujiya Avic’s latest headphone show I was busy camera whoring. As a result I removed just ten memories from the event with my Leica, four with an iPad, and four with an iPhone. Of the photos I took with my Leica, just seven are safe for work. And because I’m not a great iPhoneographer, I came away with just two usable mobile images.
Read moreAstell & Kern's wholesome AK300
FitEar/Fostex TE100 hybrid collaboration earphone
There's more to Fujiya Avic headphone festivals than drinks with the mates. TE100, the fruit of a partnership between FitEar and Fostex, will be on display. It is a dynamic/balanced armature hybrid with what looks like a metal treble tube.
Read moreTRRRS 4,4mm: JEITA's new balanced headphone standard
Phileweb inked four pages (Japanese) about a new, bigger, sleevier balanced headphone standard devised by the Japan Electronics and Information Industries Association. JEITA's reason for further complicating our world? There were too many connectors. Naturally, the world needed a new one. They didn't want to cooperate with extant designs (page 2). 2,5mm and 3,5mm were too small and 6,3mm was too large. 4,4mm was just right (page 3).
Read moreOcharaku Sakura Plus has landed
An afternoon of good tea and shop talk at Mr. Yamagishi's office in Tokyo, I came back with a Sakura Plus review loaner. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I drank too much tea. Nor am I embarrassed that the Sony PCM-D100 recorder tickled my fancy. Together (and I like to think that Mr. Yamagishi enjoyed my presence) we geeked out over high altitude tea, weird audiophile recordings, and of course: Sakura Plus (black) and Akazakura Plus (red).
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