Woo Audio WA5 integrated amplifier/headphone amplifier
When I applied for this fabulist audio-preacher gig, John Atkinson protested, "But Herb, aren't you a triode-horn guy?"
"No, that was decades ago! Today I'm still a bit of a Brit-fi guy, but my mind remains wide open."
However: As a professional reviewer, I am biased toward affordable, lovingly engineered audio creations made by family businesses with traditional artisanal values. I enjoy solid-state as much as tubesoften more!
World's Best Headphone: The Focal Utopia
This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.comAnd then, at 21 second in, right after she sings, "When God gave out rhythm...", two chords are gently played on the piano. My goodness, I've never heard such sensitively percussive, harmonically rich, filled with weight and substance sound from a piano. Most astonishing is the interplay of tones, harmonics, and intermodulation making the whole of the chord a rich textured wave of sound. I was transfixed until track's end.
YBA Design WD202 D/A headphone amplifier
YBA Design's new WD202 D/A processor and headphone amplifier showed up while I was turning the pages of Don and Jeff Breithaupt's Precious and Few: Pop Music of the Early '70s, recommended by John Marks in his October 2009 "Fifth Element" column. Each page drips with great examples of why the 1970s often wind up on the wrong end of the culture stick (the Osmonds, anyone? Terry Jacks?).
ZMF Atticus Sealed Over-Ear Headphones
This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.comTo my eyes, the Atticus is one half of a two part experiment by Zach Mehrbach, Founder and CEO of ZMF Headphones. His past has been dominated by the venerable, but in my opinion underperforming, Fostex T50RP planar magnetic driver. I guess Zach sees his future with a more modernthough more commondynamic driver. It seems to me he's designed these latest two headphones as an experiment to find out just how good a headphone he can build using two different types of dynamic driver: the Atticus with a TPE (Thermoplastic Elastomer) diaphragm driver; and the Eikon with its bio-cellulose cone and rubber surround.
ZMF Eikon Sealed Around-Ear Headphones
This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.comOn the one hand you have Sony, Sennheiser, AKG, and the like mounting big bucks R&D efforts to grab at the various brass rings in the headphone world; and on the other hand you have a guy like Zach Mehrbach, Founder, CEO, and Chief Cook and Bottle-Washer at ZMF Headphones, who's artisanal approach is less mental and measurement, and more heart and art...lots more.