Recent content by Fone

My favourite headphones. Just so expensive. These sound better with the more expensive third-party amplifiers IMHO. The Stax are a bit heavier than I would like but that is not an issue but for long sessions.

I have listened to these Sony headphones several times. Overall, I really liked the sound, comfort, and build quality. The semi-closed build is unique. In the real world, this is one of my favourite headphones. Living in Japan near a headphone store, I have had the good fortune of trying most...

I have used several CEntrance portable devices with my phone and thought they were excellent. They seemed to be everywhere in Japan, audio stores, big-box retailers, magazines, audio fairs, etc... I wonder if this defect was a one-off or a problem with all the R4 interfaces.

Crazy as over the past decade Sony invested heavily in premium portable audio solutions and released a lot of top-tier products (many did not make it to western markets, alas).

A few years ago there were a lot of mods sold for the Behringer DEQ2496. Some of the DIY audio forum people found some design shortcomings (which I can not recall) that could not really be "upgraded" and I think that killed the upgrade business. Behringer did some firmware upgrades so maybe that...

We have the RB-1050 and it is a great little amp. It is "pleasant" to listen to and sounds "clean". The front cooling fins are for fashion purposes only. Our Yamaha VFET and our tube amplifiers are great but frankly, the Rotel gets most of the use. It is a workhorse that doesn't use much power.

I have tried several of the CEntrance portable headphone solutions and they all worked great with good power and clean sound. CEntrance are popular in Japan and sold both in specialty headphone stores and the large electronics department stores. I met the CEntrance founder Michael Goodman at a...

I found the DT990 Pro to be comfortable and enjoyable.

Mark Furneaux video modding the Speaker Protect Circuit in the Schiit Lyr 3 Amp/DAC.

I had one and it was a blast. I liked the UI. Alongside REW Software, the DEQ2496 was an intuitive teaching tool for audio and room acoustics. It definitely was not transparent so I sold it eventually. There were a ton of mods on these, principally at diyaudio.com. I recall somebody found a bug...

Sony sells dozens of DAPs in Asia. The performance is all across the board. The 105 is not so good. These are great for commuting without draining difficult to replace mobile phone batteries.

I have the RME BabyFace Pro model. There is a DC power input jack on the side. I wonder if better performance would be measured if the box were connected to a high quality power source.

I heard these with a subwoofer in a store and really liked them. I have heard the similar KEF LS50 probably a dozen times and like the driver engineering and style. But I thought they sounded rather mediocre.

Beautiful design. I love the coherent, time-aligned speaker arrangement. Great "reviews" but something is wrong with the ls50 IMHO. I have listened to these at least a dozen times. I heard KEFs 3 driver bookshelf speaker last weekend and quite liked it (the R3)

Dell XPS laptop headphone outs are terrible (in 9550 and 9560 models I own). Very obvious distortion and not much power. Frequently laptop requires a reboot when removing the headphones from the jack. The wonky Waves software keeps self installing and is driving me nuts.