Headphone News Blog

Shure announced some new headphones in the SRH line: the SRH750DJ. As one could feasibly guess from their name, they were designed with DJs in mind. The headphones use custom 50mm drivers, which should "deliver high-output bass with extended highs," which is something no self-resepecting professional DJ should be without. The cable and ear cups are replaceable, which should extend the headphones' longevity.

Click here to read more and see a larger image!

Ultrasone, the manufacturer known for the HFI-2200s and probably other headphones as well, has unveiled a new flagship model today. You can read more about it and see a larger picture by clicking this posts's title!

Oh man! We got the Sennheiser HD 800s in the mail today! Click here to read the full article, which is full of terrible iPhone pictures!

Grado, a company known for its innovative design, is set to revolutionize the headphone industry once again. The new GR8s are the first headphones in Grado's line-up that won't rest outside the head. Due to an as yet unspecified technological breakthrough, these new headphones will actually fit inside the ear.
 

Read on for our preliminary breakdown of this incredible feat of engineering.

[via Gizmodo]

Twitter is arguably the greatest technological advancement since technology was even invented. HPI has therefore decided to leap into the future of communication as we know it by creating a Twitter account. We'll update it when we get test results or publish reviews. It should also serve as a more direct means of communication between us and you, our adoring fans.

In an effort to get you guys the awesome headphone reviews you salivate for, we've let the Headphone ReviewBot collect dust lately. Allow us to remedy this by quickly summing up our last four reviews. If you like reading, we recommend you read the full reviews. If you hate reading, then you will love this blog post.

Sennheiser's MX W1s are an interesting look at some technology that might, in the future, be affordable. At the moment, though, it isn't. The MX W1s have audio quality that's about what we'd expect from a good set of wireless in-ears: not good by any stretch, but not horrible either. We suppose the MX W1s will be attractive to some, if only for the novelty factor, but we really, really recommend waiting for the price to drop. At $500, we cannot recommend buying these.

One myth a lot of headphone users hold particularly dear is that of burn-in. The idea is that your headphones sound less than ideal straight out of the box. What you have to do is play 100-200 hours of music, which gets the headphones' innards to loosen up.

The problem with this is that, while burn-in is a very widely held belief that isn't limited to headphones, there really is no proof of its existence or nonexistence.

What we're going to do, starting right this very second, is run a battery of audio tests on the headphones fresh out of the box, and then after getting burned in for at least 100 hours (we'll note the total time the headphones were burned in; sometimes we'll need to ship the headphones back before the 200 hour mark). We will be using different genres of music each time we do the burn-in, and we'll try to get in multiple copies of the headphones so we can test with different genres of music to see if the effects are different.

If you have any suggestions on different stuff we can do with this experiment, email us!

[Bad Photoshop courtesy of images from HeadRoom and chuckbauman.com]

Well, we have the MX W1s in for review, but we've run into a strange issue: they don't want to recharge. At first the headphones complied with our requests, their orange "I am charging!" LEDs shining merrily. As time wore on, however, we started having more and more trouble getting them to charge. When we'd plug them in they wouldn't recognize their orange LED would flash briefly, but we couldn't get it to stay on.

Our PR contact said it's a known issue and set me up with Sennheiser's tech support line (860-434-9190 if you need it). We've left a message and are awaiting a response. We will update this blog post as we delve deeper into this mystery.

UPDATE: Apparently some of the early production units are simply broken. If you own a pair and run into a similar issue, Sennheiser will replace them for you. Just call the aforementioned support number.

We just got in a pair of Sennheiser's MX W1s, which are wireless in-ear headphones. Our super-fast initial impressions? The audio quality seems fine for a pair of in-ears, especially wireless ones (in-ears and wireless headphones, separately, often have poor audio quality compared to wired, full-sized headphones). The sound was a bit muffled/blanketed and suffered from some high-pitched noise. We didn't really notice the whine unless we listened to classical or quiet music. 

The headphones have two pieces that go into your ear: the first sits in the ear, like Apple's packaged-in headphones, and the second helps wedge the ear piece between your concha and tragus to keep it from falling out. We were very surprised to see they didn't come with any sleeves for the main in-ear piece; the result is some discomfort and very poor isolation. UPDATE: haha, we're dumb and didn't fully empty one of the boxes. They do come with one pair of sleeves for the main part and two sets for the smaller nub.

Keep an eye out for our review, which we hope to get up soon(ish). 

It's been a while since we've done one of these, so our apologies to those who follow our sadly neglected RSS feed.

We just got our review up of the ATH-ANC7s. Our verdict? They aren't anything special, but they're priced very generously. They don't have great sound quality and their active noise cancellation isn't quite good, but they cost $100. Have you seen what active-cancellers generally cost? At this price, the ATH-ANC7s are a good pair of entry-level active-cancelling headphones. You should check these out if you want a pair of headphones to wear on the go, but hate sticking headphones into your ears.

We got to spend a few minutes with the Sennheiser HD 800s yesterday. We don't have much time right now for a full report on it, but we will say this: there is just cause for the things costing $1400.

Jude from HeadFi sums up our impressions well in this article, including the way he gushes over it, not knowing where to start on his diatribe of how absurdly awesome these things are. We wouldn't know where to start either, although it would probably involve us squealing like a 4 year-old girl for about 15 minutes.

At Sony's press conference we got some info on some of their headphones, but mainly got to check out their new line of bass-boosting headphones. The Sony Extra Bass Headphones, as they are called, consist of the over-ear MDRXB300s, MDRXB500s, and MDRXB700s, and the in-ear MDRXB20EX and MDRXB40EX headphones.

We stopped by the Sennheiser booth tonight at Digital Experience and got to see the HD800s and MX W1s in person. We couldn't listen to either, but maybe – if you guys eat all your vegetables – we could stop by their booth tomorrow to give you our worthless, subjective opinion on how they sound. We did, however, scrounge up some information on each.

At the Monster press event today, they were giving away some freebies of their new $150 headphones, the Turbines. There was a very limited amount, so they were only giving them out to a a select few, super important, ultra handsome journalists. Needless to say, they gave every single one to HeadphoneInfo.com. Our super-strict ethics policy mandates we can't actually keep them, but we will be borrowing them long enough to get them into our lab. What follows is a really precursory review of the Monster Turbines, complete with our utterly subjective opinion of how they sound.

We're here at CES 2009, awaiting awesome news from all your favorite headphone manufacturers. Interestingly enough, the first interesting news of the day is only tangentially related to headphones: Sony is introducing a new media player with headphone-independent noise cancellation. That's right, the media player itself will feature active cancellation. We're guessing it'll work the same way as it does in headphones: the device will have a mic, listen in for ambient noise, then output inverse sound waves.

This technology raises a few questions. First of all, what does this mean for active cancellation on headphones? The feature ruins audio quality, gives your headphones a battery dependency, and often means you can't listen to your music without the feature active. If this feature gains popularity, will active cancellation migrate off of headphones and onto devices where it can be better implemented? Further, will the active cancellation focus exclusively on bassy sounds? On the headphones we've reviewed, the active cancellation mainly eliminates lower frequency sound. If the feature doesn't, then will the sound of your pocket fabric rubbing against the mic have an adverse affect on audio quality?

There's a good chance we'll have answers to these questions and more after the Sony press event tonight. 

If you want to check out a story on the media player itself, the Sony Walkman NWZ-X1000, check out the article on our sister site, MediaPlayerInfo.com.

The Beats by Dr. Dre and Monster will soon undergo a palette swap from black to white — BUT ONLY FOR  A LIMITED TIME!!! Since this is an exploding offer and explosions are AWESOME, Monster figures these new headphones are worth 2x the MSRP price of the originals. The originals were $350, meaning these new ones are $02BC. Oh, sorry, the sheer magnitude of the price caused us to slip into hexidecimal. Ahem. The new ones are $700. Yeah, that's a lot. There currently aren't any pictures of it out there, but through the magic of a 15-second Photoshop, we've produced the image at right. If the actual product is worth $700, then this picture must be worth at least $5.

[Via Gizmodo]

This coming week we'll be announcing the best headphones we've reviewed thus far. There are a few categories: best portable headphones, best active-canceller, best home headphones, and headphones of the year. It's going to be the best article ever by a significant margin, so you should check it out. If you don't, you'll probably never know what headphones you should by for your friends and family this holiday season. Since we know you love your friends and family and know you want to get them the best presents for your money, reading our HPI Select Awards article is virtually mandatory.

Audio-Technica announced quite a few headphones today. They have three over-ear and two in-ear offerings, with higher-end and one not-as-high end models in each category.

The ATH-CK100 and ATH-CKM50 headphones are the in-ear options. The ATH-CK100 uses a fancy triple-drive system, apparently. It spans a frequency range of 20Hz to 18kHz, a 23Ω impedence, and a 113dB sound pressure level. The ATH-CKM50 is a bit more vanilla (it just has a boring old 10.7mm driver), but it is capable of a slightly bigger frequency range: 14Hz to 24 kHz. The CKM50s also have a different impedence and max SPL, which are 16Ω and 104dB respectively.

Both earphones will be available for the US equivalent of $600 (!) on November 21st.

The over-ear, high-end options are the ATH-A1000X and ATH-A2000X. The main difference between the two is their frequency range: the ATH-A1000X runs from 5Hz to 42kHz, while the ATH-A2000X runs from 5Hz to 45kHz, which isn't really that big a difference. Otherwise they're the same: an impedance of 42Ω, a sound pressure level of 101dB, and a 53mm driver.
 

The ATH-AFW headphones are a more portable over-ear, which run from 15Hz to 23kHz, have an impedance of 30Ω, are capable of outputting 105dB SPL, and have 36mm drivers.

There's no street date or price on any of these over-ear headphones yet.

Aesthetically, these look really similar to other Audio-Technica offerings (click here for more pics). We will look forward to getting in some of these units for review. Until the Headphone Review Bot gives us the run-down, we refuse to speculate on how these things will sound. 

[Story and pics via Akihabara News (in-ears, over-ears)]

Scitec and Swarovski are coming out with two headphones that look... quite different. The first is the regal IES-100, which has a large crystal and looks like it would feel comfortable playing Mozart at moderate volumes into high society ears. The second, the SEB-100 is perfect for the goth/rocker/hipster/scenester/teenager who doesn't already have skull headphones.

The headphones themselves only have basic specs available at the moment. Both run on a 20Hz-22kHz band and have an impedance of 16Ω. The fancy pants model is actually capable of slightly more volume than the skullphones -- 105dB/mW compared to 98dB/mW -- which will surely pop a few monocles off the Edwardian dandies who own them.

Both will be available in Japan later this month with an open price of ¥10,000. Should they come to our shores, this is approximately $100 US.

There's some more pics after the jump.

[Via Engadget]

Since it's apparently a growing market, Audio Technica is offering their own line of female-only headphones. The press release contains quite a few models, but the only stated differences between them are colors and price. We can only imagine how the person who wrote this release justified the lack of substantial information:

"Typically press releases contain boring specs that only nerds care about. Sure, they'll let you know if the headphones are pretty awesome -- but what if you're just looking for pretty? Instead of boring everyone with dry numbers on impedence (whatever the heck that is, am I right?), how about we just list the one spec that our demographic cares about: colors. Also, we'll drop vaguely empowering phrases in there like 'women on the go.'"

Fortunately, for you females that also want to know something about the products, we rounded up a few specs from Audio Technica's product page. Since there's a bunch of tables and pictures, you'll have to click here to read the full post.

[Press Release]

Are you deaf? Do you like to listen to music but don't want to block out any ambient noise? Do you like shooting vibrations into your skull? Perhaps you should continue reading this very blog post, because we have quite a product in store for you!

	Photoshop is a cruel mistress.

It's the Audio Bone! It shoots vibrations into your head which jiggle around your inner-ear bones, letting you hear music without all the fuss of shoving sound drivers into your ears. As a general rule, ambient noises ruin your music, but we understand there are times when you'd rather keep an ear out. We can see these things being useful for people who absolutely need to hear ambient sounds, or for people who are too careless to wear real headphones.

You can buy the standard Audio Bone headphones in orange, black, blue, or white for $189 plus $8.95 shipping & handling. You can also buy them in Super Special Secret Limited Edition Bonus Colors, but they'll cost you an extra $30. We remember back when pallette swaps were a lame, unimaginative way to create the illusion of quantity; nowadays the service actually makes stuff more valuable.

"But HeadphoneInfo.com," you cry, "these headphones can't move around to conform to my freakishly deformed head! What am I to do?" To you, dear reader, there is but one solution: the Ultimate Thundervenom Double-Dog Awesome Edition, aka the Audio Bone Adjustable. This purchase ($219 + $8.95 s&h) will allow you to rotate the ear clip in what appears to be a 90-degree arc. You can also fold them up and store them in the included carrying pouch!

Our initial impression: it's an overly-expensive, uncomfortable gimmick. Time will tell if we're correct, but we're wary for a few reasons. First of all, that picture above and to the right is from them, and it's quite bad. Secondly,the product launched with no distributers, which is a bad sign. Finally, the press release says, "For More Information Contact: Larry Popelka, President, GameChanger Products." The president is running customer service?

You can find the press release here, and Audio Bone's official site is here.

These unlikely headphones were created by designer Yoosang Kim. As some might remember, there was an erroneous internet factoid making the rounds a while back: using in-ear headphones for an hour will cause bacteria in your ear to multiply by a factor of 700, making ear infections all but a certainty. As it turns out, that number was misquoted and in-ear headphones aren't really that dangerous. In any case, Kim didn't get that memo, and he made these headphones to be less bacteria friently so your music is more antiseptic.

First of all, yes they do look neat, and we think the clasp-behind-the-neck design is an interesting way to keep your ear buds in check when they're not in use. We can see these things being used, assuming there's some really, really fancy active cancellation involved. You'd need something to cancel out the incoming sounds and, so as to not be a jerk to those around you, some active cancellation blasting the sounds leaking out. You'd need some ridiculously good engineers, and you probably wouldn't be able to implement the technology in such a small set of in-ears right off the bat, but somewhere down the line this design might see the light of day -- in theory at least.

Practically speaking, how can you mass-market a set of in-ears that have no customization? We could understand if they were on-ear or over-ear, because those designs allow you to build big and typically those headphones have extendable bands. These things are just metal loops; what's to prevent them from falling out of some people's ears or being too big for others? 

(more pictures after the jump)

[via Gizmodo]

Although virtually everyone knew they were on their way, Denon has just made the AH-D7000s official. The AH-D7000s, which are a step up from the AH-D5000s, should be available in the middle of September.

Why are these headphones interesting? Well, in following the latest trends, the case will be made of Mahogany. In terms of specs, they should be similar to the D-5000s, but with a better driver: 50mm Neodymium drivers, 25Ω impedance, 108dB/mW sensitivity, and a frequency range of 5-45,000Hz.

It should cost around 800€ when it's released, which is about $1,180.48 in the US.

(there's some bigger pics after the jump)

[via Akihabara News]

Perhaps you have heard of Monster's Beats by Dr. Dre headphones? Apparently Jay-Z did and, not to be outdone, has teamed up with Motorola to produce his own pair of headphones. That's right, it's the mid-90s all over again.

The headphones, the MOTOROKR S7-HD, have A2DP stereo and an integrated mic so you can use it with your cellphone. Also, don't assume these headphones look anything even remotely like this, because the FCC  themselves hit the FCC late last night. The FCC is notorious for taking horrible pictures, so there's no telling what these things actually look like (there's a bigger picture after the jump).

[Via Engadget]

Are you female? Do you feel women aren't being adequately represented in the headphone industry? Have you secretly been longing for pink headphones with a bow and jewels and a color palette straight from a Lisa Frank drawing? 

The headphone industry, much like the video game industry, has been known to dabble in reinforcing gender stereotypes. The Fiore line of headphones, by Radius, is just the latest awkward attempt to reach the frighteningly alien female demographic. There are two headphones in the line: the HP-HWF31 (Elegant) and HP-HWF11 (Cute) by Radius,

Here's a run-down of their selling points: 

• 10mm/6.4mm dynamic drivers (for Cute and Elegant respectively).
• 98dB/100dB sound pressure level (for Cute and Elegant respectively).
• 16Ω  impedence.
• 3.94 feet of cable.
• Won't snag your hair or mess it up.
• Come with a clip, which is shaped like a jewel-encrusted ribbon.

At the end of the month, you're free to purchase Cute for $27 and Elegant for $18 (on the Japanese market). For a mere $45 investment, you could buy both for a lady friend, then say something like, "Now you're both cute and elegant!" Then you can spend the next awkward 15 minutes explaining no, that's not how you meant it, and that no, you didn't stop and think how unprofessional she'd look to the partners with pink, bejeweled headphones.

[Via CrunchGear]

We recently found an article with a promising headline: "'Radioholics' beware! Headphones may cause 'heartache.'"

"Interesting," we mumbled at our computer, readying headphones-attack.jpg for another hilariously sarcastic blog post.

As it turns out, however, the article doesn't really deliver. There is one (1) line in the entire write-up that talks about headphones' effect on our heart. The claim is that, other than causing deafness, listening to really loud music, "may develop psychogenic disorders and hypertension which will end up in cardiac ailments." That's it. The rest of the article continues on to elaborate about why loud music is bad for your ears, but doesn't mention these "cardiac ailments" again in any sort of detail.

We were expecting lots of quotes from "doctors" making outlandish claims! What about errant soudwaves getting lodged in your left ventricle, or perhaps cardiac arrest induced by an overdose of binaural beats (digital drugs)?

Like most insinuated threats, we're guessing this story will soon be picked up by countless other news publications, who plan on interviewing doctors and doing a lot of journalism. We're going to take the high road, however, and offer up some good, old-fashioned hearsay. We write about headphones, so we're just as good as any doctor at guessing how headphones affect the human body. Therefore, we hope to beat mainstream media to the published punch: here are just a few educated guesses as to what horrors can befall your heart when... headphones attack!

Unfortunately, in an effort to conserve valuable blog space, we've been forced to relocate this list to another page (this one).

In a $34 million deal, Logitech bought out Ultimate Ears today. The deal is expected to close in August. It's an interesting acquisition, since Logitech has only been producing low-end headphones up until now. Ultimate Ears is known for making customized headphones (that cost upwards of $1000) for famous musicians and also rich people who want to feel like famous musicians.

Therefore, we found the following quote from Logitech's president and CEO somewhat interesting (mainly just the emphasized part): 

Since its inception, Ultimate Ears has been driven by innovation, close ties to its customers, and the desire to enable an immersive audio experience. Logitech’s success has been built on using a deep understanding of our customers to create innovative products that let people immerse themselves in their pursuits – whether they are listening to music, gaming, watching a video or otherwise enjoying their digital lifestyle. We look forward to using our worldwide distribution network and operational efficiencies to help more people discover this superior listening experience.

Ultimate Ears has never been a mainstream headphone company with a robust consumer line. It seems like Logitech is planning on steering the company away from its musician niche. Custom-fit headphones don't really benefit from a larger distribution network -- unless there are going to be Build-a-Bear-esque Ultimate Ears outlets. More than likely, Logitech just wanted to get in on the higher-end in-ear market and bought Ultimate Ears for their name and reputation. Our prediction: expect their .fi line to grow exponentially.

Fun "facts" from the press release:

• "An estimated 75 percent of today’s top touring rock musicians now use the Ultimate Ears custom-fit in-ear monitor while performing"? Not to diminish Ultimate Ears' achievements, but the term "top touring rock musician" can mean just about anything. They could be referring to three-fourths of Nickelback.
• "Ultimate Ears employs nearly 40 people." This ballpark figure is tantamount to understanding this acquisition. Nearly 40 people implies Ultimate Ears is classified as having "Lots" of employees.

Man, just when we couldn't imagine headphones getting any worse, it turns out they're a gateway drug. That's right, today littly Suzy is listening to her newfangled Warped Tour '08 compilation CD. Tomorrow, Suzy's gone from a headphone user to a headphone "user." She's an audiojunkie. Just another freq freak in search of another amplitude trip. Welcome to the seedy underbelly of the internet: binaural beats.

Don't be fooled by websites claiming binaural beats are some benign meditation aid. Binaural beats are, scientifically speaking, the devil's serenade. Even more scientifically speaking, it's when two close-but-not-identical frequencies play back through your headphones, corrupting your brainwaves with aural LSD. The worst part: anyone can download binaural beats off the internet (this means your children). That's right, your kids are, at the moment, downloading these "digital drugs" and soaring high on their addicting amplitudes.

Want more proof? Read this exposé, which was recently published on USA Today's website by their internet journalists. You'll find out all about how binaural beats can emulate the effects of marajuana, alcohol, heroin, or even HEAVEN OR HELL. That's right, mad science has quantified the experience of being in Hell, figured out a way to emulate the experience using only off-tone soundwaves, and then arranged a demonic cacophany that will corrupt your kids.

The most terrifying part about this story is binaural beat abuse, like the inexorable march of time or music piracy, is virtually impossible to stop. There is literally one (1) way to save your child from the hell of being a high-fi hop-head, and you'll have to click here to see it.

Farmers, who traditionally shake their collective fist at headphone-wearing youths, will soon be employing headphone technology themselves. Cow headphones.

The headphones, called "Ear-A-Round," don't work like the typical invisible fence, either. You know how cowfolk always wisper sweet nothings into the ears of their cattle to get them to move? These headphones will play the farmer's croonings, among other sounds and voice commands. The sounds will help the farmer wirelessly corral his livestock. If the cows don't respond to their owner's dulcet tones, they'll get a mild electric shock.

The most interesting part of this story, though, is each headset will be outfitted with GPS: the farmer will be able to see where each cow is in his field, so he can direct them away from over-grazed parts of the pasture. Is it us, or does this sound like a real life hybrid of StarCraft and Harvest Moon?

[Via Delaware Online]