ONKYO: Iron Maiden Headphones

Metal legends Iron Maiden and Onkyo have revealed the name of their new on-ear headphone collaboration: Ed-Ph0n3s. Earlier this year a visual mock-up of the headphones was displayed on Maiden’s iconic mascot ‘Eddie’, at CES in Las Vegas. In the intervening months, Onkyo has worked with group founder member and bassist, Steve Harris to fine-tune […]

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STAX DA 100, CA-X, SRA 12s, servicing, attitude towards end-users, Audio Research REF75 and 5SE as possible alternatives

Originally published in 2009 Question: Hi. I have à pair of Stax da 100  with ca-x after  having the da80 vwith sra12s I had some problems with the ça-x but none up to now with the  da100 and i had them  for almost  30 years  I like them how ever vu the age and the […]

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KOETSU: Rosewood Signature Platinum

STEREOPHILE: Among the more intriguing audio-related announcements this year was that Koetsu phono cartridges were once again available in the States. In fact, they’re being handmade in limited quantities by the sons of founder Yoshiaki Sugano. There are three new models, each using samarium-cobalt magnets with a healthy 600µV output: the Standard (Red), the Rosewood […]

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FOSTEX: Why use good headphones?

Aggravating a dealer or two! Whether dealers like it or not, there are certain things that headphones can achieve which even the world’s finest stand-alone hifi systems can’t. There’s no magic to this. It’s purely the fact that the driver mechanism of the headphone is within an inch or two of the receptive areas of […]

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Quill

SURPRISING, BUT MAYBE NOT AS MUCH AS YOU’D THINK: 10 pre-owned vintage CD players under £40 each compared

In this, my latest experiment, I decided to buy as many pre-owned / low cost CD players as I could afford for the investigation and NONE over £40 each from the major auction sites. PART 1: I wanted to determine if via my reference system #1 (£100 in total), I could (a) hear any worthwhile […]

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FIDELITY RESEARCH: What happened?

Apparently … Made a well regarded line of arms to along with the cartridges that were their main line of business. The FR-64 series is probably the most common on the second hand market, the FR-64fx with a black anodised aluminium armtube and the FR-64s wich featured a Steel alloy tube are usually considered better […]

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