The Woo Audio WA8 Eclipse is big for a portable amp, but incredibly tiny for an all-tube headphone amplifier. The WA8 was in development for three years with a goal of shrinking the size to the minimum and optimizing sound quality. True, there are other portable, battery-powered tube amps, but they’re hybrid tube/solid-state designs — …

Before we get to sound base and sound bar speaker systems, let’s back up for a short history lesson. In the early 2000s packaged home-theater-in-a-box (HTiB) systems were a really big deal because they offered a simplified solution to the complexities of receiver, speaker and subwoofer matching for dazed and confused consumers. True, some HTiBs were awful, but most were …

I’ve seen it happen many times. A big speaker puts out a lot of bass and overloads the room. The room is too small for the speaker, and the sound turns thick and boomy as a result. It happened to me years ago when I moved from one apartment with a large living room and a suspended, creaky wooden floor …

FiiO’s K1 USB digital converter has been buried under a pile of crap on my desk for months, but it’s not my fault. The K1 is so darned small it’s easy to lose track of, but now that I’ve gotten around to listening to it I’m here to spread the news: this super-affordable gizmo is really pretty decent. You can …

Back in the days before the interwebs turned the music business upside down, our musical vistas were limited to our own collection or whatever was on the radio. That was a long time ago. Even today, in a world with endless choices finding new music that makes you feel something, think, or move isn’t always easy, and if it’s not …

I reviewed the open-back MrSpeakers Ether headphone last June, and since then my admiration for its sound has only deepened. The Ether is clear as a bell, easy on the ears, beautifully made, and supremely comfortable. The new model, the Ether C, shares much of the original’s tech, but it’s a closed-back, noise-isolating headphone. Those real carbon fiber ear cups …

This review is CNET Senior Associate Editor Ty Pendlebury’s idea — he brought in the Raumfeld Stereo L wireless tower speakers and suggested I give them a try. I liked them well enough, but I also wanted to compare the Stereo Ls with a set of wired Pioneer SP-EFS73 tower speakers. The contest proved interesting, as we shall see. The …

If you want to hear your music with the utmost clarity, Stax electrostatic headphones are the way to go, and their SR-L500 ($700, £545) would be a great place to start. Trust me on this, if you’ve never heard an electrostatic headphone you’ll be in for a shock! The sound is dramatically clearer than any conventional headphones you ever heard. …

The GoldenEar Technology Triton One is a big tower speaker that has what it takes to fill large living spaces with sound. That’s what big speakers do: present music’s scale and power better than small speakers can ever muster. Of course, GoldenEar Technology offers a range of smaller speakers, but there’s no reason why you can’t use Triton Ones in …

I have a number of friends who love music and have the worst audio systems, and though I’ve tried to help them out most couldn’t care less about the sound of their music. I’ve known folks with massive LP and CD collections who were perfectly content with the sound of the crappiest of hi-fis and headphones. This diverse group included …