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Sound Quality
With the introduction of the Focal Utopia and Elear, and now the Mr. Speakers Ether Flow, I find myself feeling the entire complexion of the high-end headphone world changing. The identifying characteristic of this change is balance. When first listening to all three of these headphones my first thoughts were of how marvelously balanced they are.

First impressions of previous high-end headphone experiences were usually along the lines of, "Okay, that sounds a little weird. Let's see if I can get used to it." With these new cans it's more like, "This…

Raw frequency response plots show the Ether Flow as fairly insensitive to movement of the headphones on the head. But I have to add that I did spend quite a bit of time when repositioning the headphones in order to get a good seal each time. I would say these headphones are fairly sensitive in the bass below the pad bounce at 60Hz to the quality of seal achieved.

Bass below 60Hz drops off about 4dB and then extends well. I'm not sure I heard the headphone this way; I don't hear any odd disjointedness that one might…

Wireless headphones are hot, hot, hot these days. I'm going to make a concerted effort to cover quite a few in coming months. Here's a start...

I really liked the MEElectronics Air-Fi Matrix2 AF62 but found the replacement product lacking...so it's got to be dropped from the Wall of Fame, and now I need a replacement low-cost wireless headphone. Fortunately, Noontec has just released the Zoro II Wireless ($149) and it's a solid performer. Let's have a look.

Build Quality and Styling
Inexpensive headphones can be…

I'm going to spend the week parsing the differences between a number of the variants of the Foster 443742 (seen on page H-4 of this .pdf). This survey will include: Fostex TH900, TH900mk2, and TH610; Massdrop THX00; Denon ADH-D5000; and the E-Mu Teak stock, and with optionally available Rosewood and Mahogany cups.

Today, I'm just posting up the measurements .pdf. I'll be doing some disassembly and posting basic pictures of the insides on Wednesday. And Friday I'll post my listening impressions.

The measurements are…

They're certainly a family of headphones...but like any family, there's lots of differences. Small differences in most of the baffle plates and rear damping...could be lots of stuff going on around the driver that can't be seen. Impedance measurements show quite a bit of similarity between the Massdrop and E-Mu headphones with the original Denon line. I assume this means they're more similar in the acoustic space around the driver.

The biggest physical differences are in the Fostex branded headphones. Interestingly, they've got…

In this survey, I'll be walking you through my listening experience of these headphones and making comments with in the context of how these headphones compare with each other—I listened solely to them until I compared a few other headphones at the end of the test.

During a week of solid listening I must admit to becoming quite acclimated to their "V"-shaped character. At the end of testing when I wanted to switch back and forth between other headphones, I was quite surprised how strongly I heard smily-face tonality again…

Shots fired!

Sennheiser's new PXC 550 ($399) Bluetooth noise canceling headphone is a direct shot across the bow of Bose's battleship Quiet Comfort 35 ($349) dominance of noise canceling headphones, which I reviewed very positively. Not only do Bose own a big chunk of that market, they consistently, in my opinion, have the best isolation and sound quality performance. Let's see if Sennheiser can put a dent in that armored hull.

The PXC 550 is an extremely feature rich headphone, rivaled only by the Parrot Zik 3 in…

Noise Canceling
Noise canceling on the PXC 550 was very effective, among the best I've heard and measured. It was not as effective as the Bose QC35, however, which did a better job with high-frequency noise attenuation. Broadband overall attenuation on the Bose was -28dB, and -22dB for the PXC 550.

Phone Call Sound Quality
The PXC 550 delivers the best sounding phone conversation I've ever experienced. Even in my ridiculously loud truck I was easily able to hold a conversation and be clearly heard on the other end.

The CapTune app also has a control called "Call…

Measurements Bluetooth ANC Active

Measurements Wired ANC Off

Couple of notes here right off the bat: I had a hard time measuring these cans. I think there may be some processing going on inside the headphones in wired mode. My AP tester simply didn't want to trigger on the MLS signal in wired mode. This is not unusual if there's any sort of…

Those Massdrop guys are pretty damned smart; they've essentially created a business model that monetizes a group buy. But more than that...they lurk in the shadows of headphone enthusiast forums and read looking for good products to make small improvements on. They cherry pick a good product, go to the manufacturer and ask for a few changes based on what they've heard themselves and on-line, and place a big bulk order to drive the price down. And then they sell a boatload of them because they're terrifically priced and they're…