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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,…

Well, Sean Olive isn't going to like this review.

I was super excited for these to show up at my front door. In the midst of my RMAF show reports and trip to Boston for the Listen Inc. headphone measurement seminar, I found myself with a good stretch of time for just casually listening to the new Aeon Flow Open.

For me that means noodling around on Tidal for new music...music I'm not familiar with. I dig contemporary sounds from around the world so I decided to explore some African electronica. (Check out John Wizards, Zaki Ibrahim, Moonchild Sanelly, and Stab Virus.)…

I need to say right off the bat that I had a hell of a time with noise on my THD+noise plots during this measurement section. I retried the measurement numerous times and was able to make some improvements. The best take and probably most indicative plot was on the no filter measurements. I'm only going to show the image of the "one notch filter" plots image above as they're so similar. You can find all the plots here: no filter; black foam filter; one notch filter; two notch filter.

Here's an overlay…

How Insensitive! Part 1 of a Series

The Four Questions
Every prospective headphone and amplifier buyer needs the answers to these four questions:

These are basic questions, but headphone and…