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SMS by 50 Cent
The latest rapper to join the scene is Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. After a deal with Sleek (a pretty good headphone maker in Florida) fell through early in 2011, Jackson decided to go it alone and started his own company: SMS Audio. He acquired fashion headphone manufacturer KonoAudio in August, and set to work developing his cans. In only four months he has produced his first two products ... very speedy indeed.

These headphone have just arrived at my lab, and I've had time only to measure them and do some comparative listening against some of the other…

Old folks need headphones, too.
The NPD report "Celebrity Endorsements Do Indeed Sell Headphones" claims "... [celebrity] endorsements are extremely/very important to nearly 30 percent of consumers when deciding what headphones to buy." With about 27% of the population over age 50, and the stiff competition in rapper can market, it's not surprising to see companies looking to lure the aging baby boomers into buying headphones with old school celebrity endorsements.

AKG and Quincy Jones
AKG has a long and laudable history making headphones, and have been a staple in…

Sennheiser Adidas
I've got to admit being a Sennheiser fanboy. Their HD 650 is one of my all time favorite headphones, and the HD 800 is a technical marvel. I've visited their factory, and toured their R&D facility. Their technical prowess is simply extraordinary. I am in complete agreement with Stefanie Reichert, vice president of strategic marketing for Sennheiser, when she was quoted earlier this years as saying:

The problem a…

V-MODA True Blood and "Endorse Yourself!"
This article is about celebrity headphones. Websters defines celebrity as "the state of being celebrated." I see nothing wrong with applauding and cheering for favored artists and sports stars, but I think V-Moda takes celebrity to a new and greater level when they allow you to choose whoever you want to celebrate ... even yourself.

Not only are these great sounding and well built headphones, but you are also able, at extra charge, to choose the color of the earpiece "shield" and submit a graphic to have custom engraved on your…

Celebrity Headphone Deathmatch Winners and Losers
I reckon that since this is a deathmatch, we need to declare some winners and losers.

Winning Headphones
Soul by Ludacris SL150 - Of the big three rapper can company headphones (Beats by Dre, Soul by Ludacris, SMS by 50), I found the Soul by Ludacris SL150 to be the best of the bunch. And fairs pretty well when compared to all headphones of it's price/type. I like this headphone.

V-Moda Crossfade M-80 & V-80 True Blood - When it comes to the concept of celebrity itself, I think V-Moda nails it by giving you the…

Audez'e LCD-2 Rev.2 ($995) and LCD-3 ($1945)
I'm calling this a preliminary investigation because I like these headphones quite a bit and I want to give them a glowing review. But under the current circumstances, I just can't.

Currently, there's a lot of controversy about the Audez'e LCD-3 in this thread at Head-Fi. There have been some driver failure problems, which Audez'e seems to have been quite responsive in addressing. But more worryingly, the idea has been developed that the LCD-3 comes in two flavors: veiled…

THD+noise Measurements
Here's where things start to get a bit messy. I mentioned at the start that I've been measuring some Sennheiser HD 800s for a system characterization experiment. Here are the left and right THD+noise plots for the HD 800 with measurements taken on three different days during the same period I was measuring the LCD-3 headphones.

Here are the THD+noise at 90dB measurements of the four different LCD-3 headphones.

First, you'll notice the LCD-3 measurements are a lot more noisy and erratic than the HD 800. This measurement…

Summary
It wasn't easily apparent, but I eventually found that with female vocals the 2312341 and 2312454 sounded a bit more present than 2312260 and 2312476, which did sound a bit veiled in comparison. It was at that point that I decided I needed to average all the measurements of each headphone and compare them. The next two plots are the left and right channel of all four headphones. Each headphone frequency response shown is the average of all measurements taken of that headphone.

Though more apparent in the left channel, both plots show about a 4dB difference…

Philips Introduces a Broad Range of Headphones
If you've read about my visit to the Philips display at CES you'll know that they've been working very hard to refresh their headphone lines, and that they've managed to do a proper job of it. Over the next few months you'll start to see products available in five different lines: