“I had been wanting to try a pair of custom in-ear headphones for some time, but when I started reading online about the JH Audio headphones, including not only some rave reviews but some background on their pro audio and aviation background (the Company is named for its founder, Jerry Harvey who not only founded Ultimate Ears [he left the company in 2007] but started developing stage monitors for musicians back in 1995 while mixing live shows for Van Halen, K.D. Lang, The Cult and many other bands…”

“Reminiscent of Koss in its glory days, this new company is attempting to inhabit the high end of the headphone market at a time when the former headphone maker has gone way downmarket. Phiaton has also applied some serious engineering effort to the noise canceling design process as well. The PS 300 NC is not just a headphone, but a package that comes with a pair of proprietary rechargeable batteries (18-hour life cycle), and a charger that can use either USB or AC power, and in the latter case provides attachable plugs for different national power systems…”

“In Canada these days, we see jurisdictional battles between on-air broadcasters and specialty-channel carriers like cable and satellite, with the traditional former crowd now screaming for carriage fees when their signals are re-broadcast on such services as Rogers cable or XpressVu and Star Choice satellite distribution systems. Of course, the cable and satellite folks claim they are doing the broadcasters a favour, and don’t want to ante up any dough at this time just because conventional broadcasting is suffering advertising losses because of the recession. Whatever happened to the truism that a TV (or radio) channel was a license to print money?”

“Crystal Cable was founded in 2004 with the aim of building audio cables from a special balanced formula of gold-infused silver that increases conductivity because of its extraordinary purity, 99.9999999% conductive metal. The driving force behind Crystal Cable is Gabi van der Kleij, a trained concert pianist, who has assembled some very innovative engineers to develop and manufacture the cable materials and do final construction. All their cables are wound using special techniques that employ, as well as the proprietary gold/silver alloy, such materials as Kapton and Teflon for insulation purposes…”

“This quite inexpensive accessory is a platform made of plastic and aluminum that draws air in at the back, and blows it out underneath. You can see the two fans on the bottom. The fans run at two speeds, 1200 rpm on Low and 1600 rpm in the High position. The unit weighs just over 4 pounds, and is almost 2″ high, and roughly 17″ x 14″ wide and deep, respectively. The fan noise level is said to be 22.45 dBA in Low and 28.7 dBA in High…”

“In all my years as an audiophile I’m hard pressed to think of a piece of equipment that has had the kind of effect on my daily life that the Ultimate Ears Triple.fi 10 Pro headphones have. Certainly the timing is right, as I find myself commuting between Toronto and New York every week, and through midtown Manhattan to and from work on foot every day. I’m probably logging somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven to ten hours a week on the iPod with these things right now, and I’m loving them…”

“The ERGO 2 is the middle model in the range, distinguished from the 1 by neodymium magnets, while the 3 AMT is a more elaborate and expensive Heil driver design that replaces the Jecklin Float electrostatic model. I’ve never been much of a proponent of electrostatic cans, the best in my experience being the short-lived Koss effort of a decade or more ago…”

“A combined CD and DVD player, AM/FM receiver and sound system in a single convenient unit.” So says the introduction to this remarkable little AV system. Remember the aptly named “Boombox”, which was to be seen perching on the shoulders of urban youth? These moulded plastic monstrosities were often played at levels which caused grief to nearby unwilling listeners, as well as causing permanent hearing damage to the carrier…”

“I was intrigued by the listing, and though there are many mats out there, most DJ slip types, this one looked interesting. Its technological hook seemed to be a crochet-like pattern that exposed at least as much air between the LP and platter as rubber, an integral part of the design of the RingMat I have used for close to 20 years. By providing this space, vinyl/stylus resonances and platter/motor noise are dissipated in the air, while the record is firmly supported…”

“Of the myriad accessories now available for portable music players, and specifically iPods, only a tiny fraction have anything to do with improving sound quality. If you want to hear more from your portable it pretty much comes down to headphones and headphone amplifiers. Designed to drive the cheesy white earbuds that come with the thing, the headphone amplifier in an Ipod isn’t quite up to the task of driving the more difficult loads presented by less sensitive, larger, sealed or open-back type cans like the big Sennheisers and AKGs…”

“I discovered this product on eBay a couple of weeks back (late August 07), and was struck by its elegant simplicity. It’s a 4-input switcher, with a high quality potentiometer in a simple box, with long shafts on each rotary control to keep all contacts and point-to-point wiring at the rear near the high quality RCA ins and outs. Internal cabling is done with “24 AWG silver-plated copper wire with Teflon insulation”, according to the web site…”

“This will be a brief review of a small bottle, 2 fluid ounces or 60 milliliters in all, that coats optical discs to increase their readability by filling micro-scratches and improving reflectivity of the pitted surface. According to the white paper seen under the photo, “OPTRIX contains isopropyl alcohol, distilled water and optically optically active nonionic surfactants”, and has “antistatic properties”, is “chemically neutral and will not damage your CDs or Laser discs.”

“If you do a lot of commuting, and/or like to use your computer listen to music at work, the folks at HeadRoom have your number. I myself fall into this group, and while my commute might vary quite a bit job to job (the film business is not for those who prize consistency and predictability) I listen to music at work as often as I can. A couple of years ago I reviewed the Echo Indigo laptop sound card, a device which will fit just about any laptop and offers two 1/8″ mini outputs to drive headphones or powered speakers…”

“If only the other bleary-eyed, white-earbud-using subway riders knew how good I have it with headphones like these. Not only am I being spared the concerto for shrieking brakes and deafening track clatter by the Superfi’s 26 dB of isolation, I’m enjoying fantastic sound; Sound that, until recently, had absolutely no business coming from such tiny headphones…”

“The power conditioner market seems to be quite highly populated these days, and new players, one would hope, will have a real story to tell, rather than just a smoke and mirrors exercise like some players currently out there. We’ve seen the giant parallel bypass inductors that come out of the swamp, defying physics, and other approaches that themselves approach fraud. Close encounters of this kind we don’t need…”

“Eighteen or twenty four months ago a comment to the effect that the Ipod accessory market was significantly larger than the market for the Ipod itself might elicit a laugh. Even a casual survey of the internet these days (just google “Ipod case” to see what I’m talking about) will demonstrate just how massive a product wave Apple has touched off, and just how much larger the accessory market is now…”

“The Max 5510 is Panamax’s most feature-packed power filtration/protection product, designed to handle the power needs of an entire home AV system in one (small) power amp-sized box. Panamax calls the 5510 an “AC regenerator”, adopting a hot catchphrase of the past several years. This, I think, is a case of the marketing department getting a little carried away…”

“Just in case you somehow hadn’t noticed, portable audio is hot. White hot. Ipod white. The Ipod has become the Sony Walkman of the 21st Century and gained a cachet and ubiquity in popular culture unrivalled perhaps by any piece of audio equipment ever invented. Ipods are now the object of enough consumer lust that they can actually be dangerous to their owners…”

“If you’re the kind of audiophile who keeps on top of all things related to reproduced music via the internet, then there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already heard about the Sonic Impact Class T Amp, which has recently become a hot topic of various forums, zines, newsgroups and other online text repositories dealing with audio gear…”

“More than just a headphone jack (the Indigo actually has two 1/8″ gold plated mini jacks) the Echo Audio card is a D to A converter as well as a high quality analog output stage. It supports up to 24 bit, 96 kHz signals, uses a 100 Mhz Motorola DSP chip and has a nice, chunky analog volume control knob right on top. For those looking to use their notebook as a recorder, Echo also makes an Indigo with an analog input as well as a model aimed at DJs, featuring two independent stereo outputs.”