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I was planning on presenting the next episode in my "How Insensitive" series, but that'll have to wait till next time because a wonderful new toy has just arrived straight from the technical geniuses in Hong Kong. Today we're going to introduce you to a powerful new and affordable investigative tool: The MiniDSP EARS Headphone Jig, costing $179 USD. MiniDSP has been manufacturing audio-related DSP products since 2009. Led by charismatic Frenchman Tony Rouget, MiniDSP has made some innovative and affordable audio amplifiers, digital…

Doing audio production on a budget? Want something that sounds good? Feeling a little overwhelmed worrying about finding that one good sounding and durable needle in the haystack of crappy sounding cheap headphones that's going to break the first time it gets thrown in you backpack? Read on!

Beyerdynamic DT 240 Pro ($99)
Beyerdynamic has recently released an affordable over-ear (sort of), sealed headphone that will put a smile on most anybody's face...but mobile media producers in particular. Sure, this plain-Jane…

Sound Quality
The Beyerdynamic DT 240 Pro tends moderately toward the warm and relaxed side of neutral. Bass is nicely emphasized and extended, and reasonably tight and articulate, but does intrude a bit on the lower mids.

Midrange above 300Hz is squarely neutral and well behaved into the presence region. Above about 3kHz response takes a nose dive for an octave and returns for air in the high treble in rather lack luster, though inoffensive, manner. Vocals could seem a little…

Raw frequency response plots show that even though this is not a fully over-ear headphone, frequency response canges very little with changing position on the head. This is a remarkably stable response; this headphone's sound will be quite consistant when taking it on and off the head.

Bass response is a broad hump centered at around 70Hz and elevated about 7dB at that point. Elevated response continues up to 350Hz, which is a bit too high resulting in a slightly thickened sound in the low midrange…

One of a nice handfull of $500ish planar magnetic headphones at the show, I was impressed with the Advanced Alpha at CanJam@RMAF last October. In my report I said:

Well, time to find out if we can trust my ears at shows.

When first I reviewed the HiFiMAN…

Sound Quality
Like most planar magnetic headphones, the bass and lower half of the midrange response are flat as a board. Bass is well extended and tight and transitions well into the mids. Dynamic punch in this area is terrific. On the Conga solo sections of Conga Kings "Tumao de Tamborito" fingers hit drum skins with eye-blinking impact. Imaging on this area of the track has medium depth and good width, and sits a little lower in the head than usual...which is nice.

I could turn the volume up quite high with just the Conga drums and bass hammering on and it was quite nice…

It's deja vu all over again. Maybe Audeze decided to reverse the trend for ever more expensive headphones. Maybe they were just aware of so many people longing for the LCD2 of old. But whatever the reson, I do like seeing them breath new life into the more affordable end of the LCD line-up with their newly released LCD2 Classic.

Audeze LCD2 ($799)
The LCD2 Classic is an open acoustic, over-ear, planar magnetic headphone. While the LCD2 Classic has the same double-sided magnetic structure and ultra-thin film diaphragm…

It was a real treat being able to talk with Paul Barton about the PSB M4U 8 and NAD HP70 at RMAF last year. Paul has lead acoustic design for PSB, NAD, and Bluesound for a long, long time now; he's got a strong understanding of audio and when he designs a product it speaks of this knowledge. In listening to this headphone, I find myself listening to both the headphone and what Paul may be trying to tell us with them. It's been an interesting dialog.

PSB M4U 8 ($399)
The PSB M4U 8 is a fully featured around-ear, noise…

Noise Canceling
In testing the noise canceling function of headphones over the years I've found they are often unstable and will act strangely in some circumstances. For example, I've experienced with the Beats Studio headphones situations where I was laying on a pillow or wearing a hoodie over the headphones that they break out into low frequency oscillation at times. I've also noted significant sensitivity to position and seal while measuring some noise cancelers making the measurement of low frequency sound unreliable. This is remarkably common.

Also, almost all noise…

Measurements Wired Active

Measurements Wired Active Noise Canceling On

Above I am only showing the wired responses. Measurements were taken in wireless modes but are much the same as the wired response. Measurements sheets are available here for Wireless Active and Wireless Noise Canceling modes.

Looking at the raw responses of the PSB…