I’ve spent a good deal of quality time with Focal’s high-end headphones over the last few years, and came away with favorable impressions of them all. This new one, the Elegia, differs from the other three over-the-ear headphones I’ve heard, the Elear, Clear and Utopia. They’re all open-back designs that let you hear your surroundings. The …
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Audeze came out of nowhere in 2009. Its very first headphone, the LCD-2, put establishment brands like AKG, Beyerdynamic, Grado, Sennheiser and Stax on notice. Nine years later, the LCD-2 is still in the line, and it still makes most other brands’ full-size headphones sound rather puny. They all lack the LCD-2’s visceral bass and shockingly wide dynamic range. In …
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Some headphone audiophiles crave extreme dynamic punch or ear-massaging bass. Others are happiest only when their music sounds fully transparent. For the latter group, the king of clarity arrived in 2015 with Shure’s KSE1500 electrostatic in-ear headphone amplifier system. The sound was revelatory, but the best stuff never comes cheap, especially in audiophile land. The KSE1500 sells for $2,999 in the US, …
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Behold the majesty of the Viva Egoista 845, some might say it’s too large to be a headphone amp — it’s more akin to an integrated amp — but it’s gloriously over the top. No one needs an Egoista 845, but no one needs a 789 horsepower Ferrari either, but if you have the means, why not? I think of …
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If you crave uber clarity you’ve come to the right place: the Astell & Kern Kann will take your music to the next level. The company has dominated the high-quality portable music player market for years, and when you hold the Kann in your hands you’ll start to understand why. Measuring a tidy 1 by 2.8 by 4.6 inches (26 …
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We have an ear on each side of our head for a reason, so we can hear sounds from 360 degrees all around us. With two eyes we can only see what’s in front of us — we have to turn to look in other directions — but without turning, our two ears can easily locate birds high up in …
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