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Sound Quality
To my ears, the HD 471 is a relatively neutral headphone, with the treble gently shelved down, and a slightly weak bass response. Let's say mildly mid-centric and a little rolled-off up top. When I compare it directly with a very good (and expensive) sealed headphone like the MrSpeakers Aeon, I hear the Aeon as having a smoother, more liquid, more coherent representation of the music. Switching back to the HD 471 I hear it as slightly incoherent, boring, and less able to portray the whole of the music with its subtle detail. What I don't hear, other than the slightly…

Electrostatic Advances

I have a love affair with my Stax SR-007 Mk2 phones, which I judge to be superior, smoother, more musical and accurate than the expensive SR-009 model. What's with Stax? For them "better" seems to mean brighter, but why manufacture an even brighter headphone when the 007 model already sounds too bright? Stax seems to be obsessed with detail at the expense of musicality or even accuracy. But after-market amplifiers have sweetened that tune to a great extent.

I own the first-generation KGSS…

A New LCD-4 for Bob
When Audeze saw Tyll's report on my cans, they asked to examine them and decided to replace them, determining that they might have been damaged at some point. Honestly, I'm very glad whatever happened to my previous LCD-4s because this new pair is even more airy and extended at the high end. It definitely reflects Audeze's philosophy of continuous sonic improvement. If they can make it better, they will! I urge Sankar to send some latest samples to Tyll for measurement to demonstrate that…

One of the areas where convergence shows up in the world of headphones is cross-over from other markets. This is nothing new. Etymotic, who decades ago brought us the famously good and long-lived ER4 family of headphones, was first a hearing health company making audiometric equipment. Swiss hearing aid maker Phonak entered the U.S. market with its Audeo brand IEMs in the midst of the post-Dr Dre Beats frenzy five years ago. They, wisely I think, bowed out after a couple years in the tumult. Jabra is another such company coming…

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the Jabra Move and found it pretty good...a little too bass heavy for me, but pretty good for those who like some thump. The headphones mostly interested me because they came from Jabra, a company best known for both corporate and consumer telephone headsets.

That same curiosity had me contacting Plantronics for a similarly price headphone, the BackBeat 500. I've been more impressed with these products than I expected, but I think they're going to have to keep working on it to beat the likes of…

And now, for something completely different...a personal speaker.

Well, not completely different I suppose. I'm old enough to remember the Bone Fone from 1979.

It didn't last long.

Sennheiser introduced the Surrounder in 1997. I remember trying one.

Can't remember how it sounded—not a good sign—and it was confining and weird to wear. Don't see those around anymore.

So, to say I looked at the Bose SoundWear Companion Speaker with a great deal of skepticism when I first saw…

Acoustics and DSP
Time to put on your thinking caps, this gadget is pretty weird.

I'll forgo my normal measurement section as I'm not well set up for measuring this device, but I did do some measurements to confirm some interesting aspects of the SoundWear Companion that I'll talk about here.

The left speaker plays directly into the left ear, but the rear of the left speaker is ported into a waveguide—a tube running through the neckband—and comes out the port on the right hand side next to the right speaker. And vice versa with the right speaker. The purpose of these…

Well, it's not a cone of silence, but it certainly does give the impression of all of a sudden being in a completely different acoustic environment, largely unlike anything I've experience before. Every person I've put them on, whether an experienced or novice listener, react essentially like I did at the airport, "Woah! That's really weird...and sounds way better than I expected."

Sound Quality
The closest thing I can liken it to is a pair of better-than-average, modestly sized and priced self-powered speakers in near field listening. But even then it's not really very close…

About this time last year I reviewed the then new Sennheiser PXC 550 BTNC over-ear, noise canceling headphones in hopes that someone would manage to unseat the Bose Quiet Comfort 35. Didn't happen. The Sennheiser had some great features, but in the end it was just too bright for me.

Recently I got a few more Sennheiser wireless noise cancelers and I found they too seemed overly bright. Now I consider Sennheiser the world's best headphone manufacturer. They've got a lot of experience under their belt, so when I hear a batch…

I'll admit feeling the MrSpeakers Aeon Flow Closed look a bit alien to my eyes when first I saw it. Now that it's been on my desk for a few months I find it quite appealing. Not so much for it's looks—don't get me wrong, I quite like the look—but more because I've come to appreciate the comfort of them. No surprises when the Aeon Flow Open showed up...they were right at home on my head. Good thing too, they'll be spending a lot of time there.

MrSpeakers Aeon Flow Open ($799)
Gotta say it right up front, Dan Clark,…