Audio Accessory ReviewsAudio Accessory Reviews
Headphone and Earphone Round-up
- Written by SECRETS Headphone/Earphone Review Team
- Published on 16 August 2012
Check out the Headphone and Earphone Round-up, a summary of all the new Headphone and Earphone reviews...more to come through the end of August!
HiFiMAN HE-400 Planar Headphone and HM-601 Slim Portable Player
- Written by Stephen Hornbrook
- Published on 01 August 2012
HiFiMAN was founded in 2007 by Dr. Fang Bian, a man with a passion for portable audio. His love for music and sound quality is immediately present in his HiFiMAN products. HiFiMAN has been known for producing some very well regarded planar magnetic headphones, like the HE-6, but up until now, those reference headphones required a lot of power.
Velodyne vPulse In-Ear Headphones (Earbuds)
- Written by John E. Johnson, Jr.
- Published on 11 May 2012
With the prevalence of portable music players to the point that you must be from Mars if you don't own one, there is a huge aftermarket for high quality earphones (headphones is the category, with over-the-ear headphones, on-ear-headphones, in-ear headphones, in-ear-earphones, and in-ear earbuds being the specific type of headphone one is referring to). Velodyne, renown manufacturer of subwoofers, not to be left out of this trend, has released a set of in-ear headphones called the vPulse....and best of all, they sound like Velodyne all the way . . . a.k.a. very, very good.
D-Wings Cable Management
- Written by John E. Johnson, Jr.
- Published on 17 July 2012
All of us have had to deal with cable management in our audio and home theater systems. What we usually end up with is a tangle of wires that look like a mess. There are a number of cable management systems out there, but they most often involve tubes through which you pass the cables. D-Wings, marketed by UT-Wire, represent a completely different, and much easier to use, cable management product.
Rein Audio X-DAC with USB Input
- Written by John E. Johnson, Jr.
- Published on 10 May 2012
USB DACs are hot items now because you can play music from your computer through them and into a set of headphones or to your main hi-fi rig. Some of these DACs only have a USB input, (no S/PDIF inputs) because their main purpose is for use with a computer. Of course, all computers come with audio ciruitry on the motherboard, and if you have a sound card installed in one of the PC card slots, it may very well have an S/PDIF output. However, their quality is often questionable due to the typically low cost of the sound card. Rein Audio, a German manufacturer, makes the X-DAC, which is a 24/192 DAC with both coaxial and Toslink optical S/PDIF inputs, but also, it has a USB input (24/96) to be used with your computer, giving you better sound quality than you would get from your computer's audio circuit.
Synergistic Research Tesla Series AC Power Conditioner and AC Power Cables
- Written by Michael Jude Galvin
- Published on 17 May 2012
Moving can really suck. On top of everything else, it seems like I always lose stuff, at least temporarily. Eventually, that lost pair of shoes will turn up in a box labeled "towels," but it had been a few months since the move and I was still looking for some of the magic of my system.
Bryston 10B-SUB Active Stereo Crossover Network
- Written by John E. Johnson, Jr.
- Published on 15 February 2012
If you have a home theater system where your bass management isn't as flexible as you would like it to be, an outboard crossover network could solve your problems.
Wireless HDMI Round Up
- Written by Chris Heinonen
- Published on 11 May 2012
Now that our TVs are thin enough we often want to hang them on a wall, and manufacturers keep pushing the limits of thickness year after year. CES this year saw the advent of OLED TVs that are just millimeters thick as they no longer need backlighting systems, and serve double duty as a cheese slicer with their razor-thin profiles.
Sony HMZ-T1 Self-Contained Virtual Reality 3D Viewing Glasses: First Look
- Written by Stephen Hornbrook
- Published on 28 December 2011
Accell UltraCat HD HDMI Extender
- Written by Sumit Chawla
- Published on 11 May 2012
During CEDIA 2011, one technology that caught my attention was HDBaseT. It provided a solution to the all too familiar cable clutter problem. Below is a picture that I took at their booth which shows a set of cables whose signals could all be transmitted over a single Cat5e/6 cable at distances up to 100m.
Marc Audio Premium Line RCA Interconnects
- Written by John E. Johnson, Jr.
- Published on 22 December 2011
Marc Audio started its business of marketing quality audio cables in its on-line store only two years ago. They did not have all of their products available at the time of launch, so we reviewed what they had, as they became available. These included the Reference Line and the Signature Line. The Reference Line is their most expensive cable, but at $870/meter-pair for the RCA interconnects, they are not all that pricey compared to many other cables out there. The Signatures are their mid-priced cables ($549/meter-pair for RCA interconnects). Now, Marc Audio has introduced the Premium Line, which is their least expensive line of cables, at $158/meter-pair. Their construction quality - and more importantly - their performance, belie their very reasonable price, and I think they are one of the best values in cables out there.
