Boy is it a good time to be in the market for a $300-$400 sealed headphone. Offerings like the Sennheiser Momentum, NAD VISO HP50, and B&W P7 provides consumers with some very good choices. Now you can add two more: The Focal Spirit Professional and The Focal Spirit Classic.
Ken Shindo, the Japanese audio designer whose electronics, loudspeakers, and accessories have influenced the parallel worlds of tube audio and analog audio, and who is shown above (right) with loudspeaker designer John DeVore, died late last month after a brief illness. He was 74.
In 2007, I spent time with Bel Canto Design's e.One DAC3 D/A processor. In his review of the DAC3 in the November 2007 issue, John Atkinson quoted my comparison of it with the Benchmark DAC1, which I called "the Swiss army knife of audio" and "one of the only future-proof source components you can buy these days."
