Last year, the Bowers & Wilkins 805 D3 was the Audiophiliac’s Speaker of the Year, so I couldn’t turn down a chance to sample the company’s new 705 S2 in the CNET listening room. Decked out in a lovely satin white finish, the 705 S2 looked sharp; it’s very much a 21st-century stand-mount speaker. It’s …

Klipsch speakers, as we audiophiles like to say, have a sound. That is, they don’t sound like other speakers, and when you look at the Klipsch Forte III without its grille, you’ll start to understand why: it’s a horn speaker. While most box speakers have their drivers all mounted flush with the front baffle, the Forte III’s tweeter and midrange are horn …

I enjoy covering the widest possible range of audio products, with an emphasis on gear that gives the best sound per dollar, with occasional forays to the upper limits of audiophile nirvana. So whether your audio budget is $100 or $100,000, I’m here to help. Enlarge Image The new Yamaha YAS-207 sound bar. suzukikenji As for what you need to …

It would be all too easy to overlook the Final Audio Design E3000 in-ear headphones, but that would be a mistake. The brand makes a lot of great headphones. It may not have the name recognition of Sennheiser or Beats, but if it keeps making headphones this good, it’ll cross over to the big leagues soon. The E3000 is the …

It’s been too long since I wrote a Schiit review. I say that because this California based company specializes in high-performance audio components that sell for real-world prices. Take this one, the Jotunheim stereo preamplifier/headphone amp, sold with your choice of a built-in, 192-kHz/24-bit high-resolution digital converter, or a moving-magnet phono preamp for buyers using turntables. My sample had the …

The Rolling Stones’ “Their Satanic Majesties Request” album is an outlier in the band’s canon. The music was a clean break from the Stones’ trademark blues-based hard rock, so it wasn’t well received by fans and critics when “Satanic” was released in early December, 1967. It followed the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by five months, and where …

The Vizio SB3621n-E8 isn’t just a terrific little sound bar system for movies and TV, it’s also a sweet speaker for playing tunes. It’s the first sound bar CNET ever reviewed that earned five stars and an Editors’ Choice award. Heck, I’d be just as enthusiastic about the $149 SB3621n-E8 if it sold for $300 or $400, it’s that good. Still, it’s …

Current speaker design technologies have run their course. The best of today’s box, panel and horn speakers are awfully good, but all fall short of reproducing the sound of a rock band, jazz trio or symphony orchestra as we hear them in real life. But what will it take to get them there? My guess: Speakers need to be closer …

The Echobox Audio Finder X1 in-ear headphones are smaller than most earbuds, and their machined titanium ear pieces are understated and elegant, qualities typically in short supply in headphones in the Finder X1’s price class. They’re $150 on Amazon with free shipping for Prime customers. The “L” and “R” markings on the earpieces are next to impossible to read in low light, but …

Etymotic pioneered in-ear headphones in the mid-1980s, decades before other headphone companies followed its lead. Its ER4 model debuted in 1991, and it remained the company’s flagship model, with only slight changes, until recently. The all-new ER4 SR (Studio Reference) and ER4 XR (Extended Response) build on the original’s strengths, but they still sound very much like the earlier ER4s, …