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Twenty five years ago when I started HeadRoom and built the first commercially available portable headphone amplifier I said to myself, "The day Sony decides to enter the fray with a portable headphone amp my mission will be complete." That happened a few years ago and I've found it quite entertaining to watch this humungous consumer electronics company try to snuggle into our tiny headphone enthusiast niche.

Sure, they've been at it for quite a while: First in 1989 with the legendary $2500 MDR-R10, then in 2004 with the $…

It's pretty amazing, really. I would say Sankar Thiagasamudram of Audeze, Fang Bian of HiFiMAN, and Dan Clark of MrSpeakers—all of whom got their start within the headphone enthusiast community—have revolutionized the headphone world with their planar magnetic designs over the past ten years. HiFiMAN has a pretty diversified offering of products and provides a one-stop on-line shopping experience, but their planar magnetic designs have continued to evolve and put pressure on the other two competitors. Audeze had some some money…

Sound Quality
Simply put: This is the best sounding around-ear, sealed, headphone I've heard to date. Tonal balance is spot on but for a very slight emphasis 5-10kHz. Bass is tight, well balanced and does not bleed into the mids. Transition to mids is seamless and excellent. Midrange is excellently balanced; vocals and overtones are very well proportioned giving voices just the right sense of presence and ease simultaneously. Treble is terrifically proportioned as well; cymbals and snares sound very natural. I guess my only note here is a very, very slight over-emphasis at 5kHz-10kHz…

The first thing you'll notice about the raw frequency response is how close it is to the Harman Target Response curve. Maybe the closest I've seen of any passive headphone.

Response is remarkably stable with ear position changes though some variation can be seen 2-8kHz. I did hear this region being emphasized when having my ear positioned near the front of the earpad. A slight emphasis can be seen in and between the twin peaks at 5kHz and…

When first I saw the Audeze iSine models I wondered to myself, "What the heck are these for?" and, "Who will want these?" I'd never heard of an open acoustic in-ear before...heck, I'd not even thought of the possibility. Why in the world was Audeze even going down this road? I spent some time on the phone with Sankar Thiagasamudram, founder and CEO of Audeze, to gain some understanding.

To put it bluntly, they did it because they could. With significant experience designing, tensioning, and manufacturing planar magnetic…

Finding affordable headphones is rough. There are just so many to sort through; I wish I could be more comprehensive. I encourage readers who are aware of and own really good sub-$200 headphones to contact me so that I can measure and evaluate them more broadly. Please check the listing of headphone measurements; if your cans are not on there I'd be happy to measure them. (Email tyll@tyllhertsens.com with subject line "Headphone Measurements.")

Anywho, Sennheiser has been "remastering" their line-up for the past little while and I'…

Oh boy. The folks at Massdrop have gone and done it again. Just got their new Massdrop x HiFiMAN HE4XX in for measurements and a quick listen before the drop. There seems to be a little curiosity on the forums about from which HE400 varient the HE4XX descends. By the look of the measurements (HE4XX and HE400i) I think it most resembles the HE400i. They have changed a few things: there's a new, much better headband; they've used the lauded Focus-A pads; it's liveried now in a cool midnight-blue colorway soft-touch matte finish; and most…

Having not too long ago reviewed the $1499 AKG N90Q and finding it an astonishingly cool and effective noise canceler, I thought it would be interesting to look at what AKG was doing way down the food chain at a more affordable price. Thing is $300 is still $300, and in my book a pretty serious purchase. A $300 headphone needs to be good and competitive. Let's see if AKG managed to pull it off.

AKG N60NC ($299)
The AKG N60NC is an on-ear, Bluetooth wireless, noise canceling headphone. Styling is elegantly simple: upside-down…

Sound Quality
Sound quality in noise canceling mode, both wired and Bluetooth, is roughly the same. Tonal profile is quite good, but with a bit too much bass, which is somewhat loose in character, and with the mid-treble on up rolled-off by a few dB. The presence region in the upper-mids and low treble are just slightly low in level and a bit hard in character.

Because the treble is a little low, and the presence region a bit hard, it's hard to get too much of a read on the treble resolution other than to say it's rather non-descript. Take a real close listen though and it's…

I'll often unbox a headphone and take a good hard look and listen and then make a guess at the price before looking it up on-line. I'm usually 25% - 33% low...and disappointed at how much things cost. Not so with the Sennheiser HD 4.40 BT, I guessed $50 high at $199. It's $149...sweet.

I think I guessed high because this headphone is so damned good looking to my eyes—simple curves, subtle color accents, a quality feel. I'll quote Sennheiser from the HD 4.40 BT product page, "Elegantly minimalistic—using tough, high-quality…