Beats Mall
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Posts posted by Beats Mall
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The RS 180 features 2.4-GHz Kleer carrier frequency wireless technology, which is a lossless, "CD quality," 16-bit/44.1-kHz resolution system. The system worked flawlessly for the most part, but the sound occasionally cut out when I walked across the room and sat in front of my computer. Other than that, I experienced no other interruptions anywhere else in the room or my apartment.
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The Sennheiser HD 202 II over-ear headphones have been on sale since 2009, but they continue to be a staple for music fans who don't want to spend over $400 on a flashy high-end pair. Sennheiser lists the retail price at $34.95, but you can get them at Amazon for just $22.25. Our UK readers will have to wait for their own Amazon release, but the UK Sennheiser site has them available now for £36.99. Aussies can pick them up at JBHifi for AU$63.
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The Marshall Major 50 headphones feature a sturdy build and authentic Marshall details; they fold up neatly and store in a cloth bag; has integrated mic and three button remote; sound is exciting and suits rock music but are also capable of playing other genres.
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The PSB M4U 1 offers excellent, clean, and accurate sound. The headphones fit comfortably and come with both a "plain" cable and one that has an integrated one-button remote and microphone for making cell-phone calls. A nice carrying case and an extra set of user-replaceable ear pads are also included.
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The Amazon Echo is an attractively designed speaker and its voice-control system, anchored by soothing and smooth-sounding "Alexa," works well within its current limited scope. The speaker's Wi-Fi setup is relatively straightforward and you can also directly connect to the speaker via Bluetooth. The speaker plays loud and Alexa's voice sounds clear.
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Singapore-based X-mini is known for great compact capsule speakers such as the Kai 2, so I was excited to learn it's branched out with the Clear, a portable Bluetooth speaker. Much like the Bose SoundLink III or the Logitech UE Boom, it's meant to play music from your smartphone or tablet. It boasts a 10-hour battery life and the ability to charge your device while it plays music.
Priced at $199 in the US, AU$299 and €199 (around £160) in Europe, the Clear ships to the US, Australia and the UK and is available via the company's website.
The Clear measures 22 by 9 by 11cm (8.6 by 3.5 by 4.4 inches) and weighs 920g (32 ounces). It doesn't feel as heavy as it sounds -- it's pretty portable. The 20W, 2.1 system packs two 40mm ceramic drivers, similar to those found in the company's capsule speakers, and a 70mm active subwoofer.
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A couple of years ago, the JBL Charge stood out among its portable Bluetooth peers for offering strong sound and significantly better battery life in a compact, durable package that included speakerphone capabilities.
Its sequel, the Charge 2 ($130, £99, not available in Australia), is in some ways a better speaker, particularly in the design department, but in the meantime a lot more Bluetooth speakers have hit the market.
Like its predecessor, the Charge 2 has the added benefit of being able to double as an external battery charger for your portable devices (thus the name "Charge"). And while it plays loud and serves up a good helping of bass, its sound isn't quite what I'd hope it would be. It's good, just not great for this type of speaker.
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The Sol Republic Punk's claim to fame is that it plays louder than your typical tiny wireless Bluetooth speaker, with 6 watts of power. It's also water- and shock-resistant and offers 8 hours of battery life, with a 60-foot (18m) wireless range, around double the usual range for Bluetooth devices.
Those are good numbers and the Punk is a very good micro speaker, around half the size of the company's earlier Deck Bluetooth speaker, with dimensions of 5.2 by 5.1 by 2.3 inches (132 by 130 by 58mm) and a weight of around 8 ounces (227 grams).
It comes in a few different color options for $70 or £63. We've seen it discounted in the US to $50, and that's the only issue: it's a great buy at the cheaper price, but merely a good buy at the more expensive one.
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Harman Kardon's Esquire Mini is one of those products you'd love to receive as a gift, but you might hesitate to acquire on your own for $150 (£124.95 UK, $229 AU). It's part Bluetooth speaker, part high-quality portable speakerphone and part external battery charger. It's also one slick-looking product, with a slim unibody design (238 grams or 8.1 ounces) and retractable kickstand.
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The K551 house a 50mm (that’s, like…really big) driver for each ear. Frequency response exceeds the limits of human hearing at a rated 12 Hz – 28 kHz. Maximum input power is listed at 200mW, but AKG doesn’t mention the headphones’ impedance — an interesting omisson, since many of its headphones like to gobble up power and aren’t necessarily the best choice for portable media players
The terms “studio-grade” and “studio-quality” are tossed around with reckless abandon by scores of headphone makers these days. Unfortunately, based on our experience, those terms rarely apply to the products upon which they are stamped. But if there is one company that has earned the rights to the studio moniker, it would be AKG. The company’s K240 open-backed headphones are a staple monitor in recording studios everywhere (A/V Editor Caleb Denison won’t darken a studio’s door without a set) but now AKG is rolling out a more consumer-oriented headphone that should play nicely outside the studio.
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Until last year, Sennheiser tended to make pretty bland-looking headphones. However, that all changed with the stylish Sennheiser Momentum set.The Sennheiser Momentum On Ear are, as you might guess, the on-ear alternatives to the over-ear Momentums. And they’re cheaper too at £170. Just like their bigger brothers, they have shot straight up to become one of the best sets in their class.
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Bose AE2i
Next to Bose’s other headphones, the noise-cancelling QC3 and Quietcomfort 15, the Bose AE2i have a marginally better-balanced sound signature. The skew towards warmth is less pronounced, giving a less silky smooth but truer texture.
Bass is full, if not hugely punchy or particularly deep. Compared to style rivals, their tonal balance is impressive – especially given Bose is not generally highly regarded by purist audiophiles.
For closed headphones, their sound stage is wide too. Some closed-back headphones can sound disappointingly narrow, but the Bose AE2i do not. We have a feeling Bose’s psychoacoustic research may have had a hand in this – it involves manipulating the signal to alter the way you perceive sound, comparable in some respects to the digital signal processing modes you’ll see in many of today’s phones, used to make “fake” surround sound.
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The Samsung WAM750, or M7 for short, is a wireless speaker that streams music from a variety of sources but its key feature is its multiroom capability. With M7s dotted around the house, you can send music to different rooms using a smartphone or tablet running Samsung’s Multiroom app. The M7 is one of two speakers in the range, alongside the £259 WAM550 (M5).
With these speakers, Samsung is taking on the might of Sonos, universally considered the benchmark for intuitive multiroom music streaming. But it’s not the only company jumping on the multiroom bandwagon – Panasonic recently announced a multiroom system based around Qualcomm’s AllPlay media platform, while LG unveiled the NP8740 speaker at CES.
It’s a potentially lucrative move, given the success of Sonos and the clamour for multiroom music in general, but a brave one too – Sonos has a 10-year head start and its Play:3 and Play:5 are probably the best multiroom streaming solutions on the market. So with that in mind, let’s find out how Samsung’s effort fares…The Samsung WAM750, or M7 for short, is a wireless speaker that streams music from a variety of sources but its key feature is its multiroom capability. With M7s dotted around the house, you can send music to different rooms using a smartphone or tablet running Samsung’s Multiroom app. The M7 is one of two speakers in the range, alongside the £259 WAM550 (M5).
With these speakers, Samsung is taking on the might of Sonos, universally considered the benchmark for intuitive multiroom music streaming. But it’s not the only company jumping on the multiroom bandwagon – Panasonic recently announced a multiroom system based around Qualcomm’s AllPlay media platform, while LG unveiled the NP8740 speaker at CES.
It’s a potentially lucrative move, given the success of Sonos and the clamour for multiroom music in general, but a brave one too – Sonos has a 10-year head start and its Play:3 and Play:5 are probably the best multiroom streaming solutions on the market. So with that in mind, let’s find out how Samsung’s effort fares…
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If you are a bit too old to pull off the Beats by Dr Dre. Solo HD headphones and their youthful looks, you need something like the Beats Executive. They’re headphones that take many of the Beats by Dr. Dre traits, but pack them into a shell designed to appeal to a slightly older audience.
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Hi fellow forumers! I know there is a keen interest amongst many of us on headphone amps. Below is a cut and paste from various threads in different forums on the matter. I've saved the posts that I feel that is most relevant, and they don't necessarily come from the same thread, so it may read a little disjointed.
I do think it's informative, and if nothing else, should generate some great discussion in Sgheadphones (I hope)
Happy reading!
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[Tomb-headfi]
Your conjecture is somewhat close, but you don't get a cigar, yet.
You are confusing a volume control with amplification. Even the lowliest portable can drive many heaphones to ear splitting volumes. However, most of that volume will be produced by the peak power capability of the amplifier circuit at a very limited set of frequencies, and the rest will be distortion.
As a for instance, one of the first introductions to hi-fidelity sound is that you notice that higher quality equipment can produce higher volume without as much irritation. Most easily see this comparison with speakers; it is very little different with headphones.
Music consists almost entirely of transients on top of a baseline of more-or-less constant tone, depending on the music. Quality amplification (translated: separate headphone amp) will have plenty of power to produce the constant tone for an overall acceptable volume level, but will also have plenty of power in reserve for any transients. Besides transients, there is also the problem of differing power levels needed for different frequencies. Bass frequencies require more energy and require more power. There again, another reason for a huge amount of power over and above the simple rating of a headphone's Sound Pressure Level (SPL) efficiency.
All of this is pretty much an afterthought in basic component players, including iPods, etc. There are many more design considerations to deal with that have a greater influence on affecting overall product design. That's one of the reasons you see only earbuds or very efficient headphones with portables. They simply do not have the necessary design for a better power supply. Simple Physics dictates that more power is possible with much less effort if the voltage is higher (Power is dependent on the current squared). Unfortunately, batteries are probably more limited in voltage than current, but pretty much limited in both.
That's why you a see a culture of headphone amplifiers with power supplies up to 24V, and many with batteries up to 18V. It simply isn't possible for mfrs to include this stuff in portables meant for the masses. So, the extra headphone amp is all to ensure that every frequency, every transient gets all the power a quality pair of headphones want. The result is not necessarily an ability to turn the volume up, but a crispness, airiness, and prescence that never existed before in your headphone listening.
[Mulveling-headfi]
First of all, forget the misconception that the purpose of hifi headphones amps is just to go louder - it's about higher quality at comparable volumes.
Anytime you listen to headphones, you're using an amplifier to drive them. The amplifier could be the built-in amp from an ipod, a dedicated headphone amp, or sometimes people even use the output stage of their source as the amp. When you plug your headphones into a receiver or integrated sepaker amp, a numer of things could be happening:
1) the headphone jack is driven by a headphone amp stage built into the receiver; usually of exceeedingly poor quality
2) the jack is powered by the preamp stage of the receiver
3) the jack is powered by the power amp stage with resistors added to bring the level down
It is true that amplifiers cannot mitigate distortions from a source. However, amplifiers always add distortion of their own, and this is often what audiophiles seek to minimize by replacing the low quality "stock" headphone amps with a higher quality one. Note that this point is sort of debatable though - some types of distortion are considered euphonic in moderate amounts, while other kinds of distortion sound awful even in small amounts.
Anyways, the point is that amplifiers sound different because they add different types and amounts of distortion to the signal. Cheap amps (usually the kind that are built in) often add judicious quantities of the bad, non-euphonic kind of distortion. Also of importance is that an amplifier will often output increased distortion when driving a load it wasn't designed (or not properly designed) to drive. Here's where we get into the need for a powerful dedicated headphone amp - low impedance headphones need an amp with high current capabilities, else the amp will be strained (and distort more). High impedance headphones require a higher voltage swing (again, else distortion). High quality amps will typically be capable of large current and voltage swings, keeping distortion low over a wide rage of headphone impedances. The output impedance of the amp also affects distortion. High output impedance will cause distortion, but the quick fix (global negative feedback) itself is considered to cause very non-euphonic distortion. There are many design considerations to an amp that all affect the sound.
A single transistor or opamp can't come close to doing the job right, which is why high end amp design is complicated and why the cheap built-in amps sound like crap.
Sometimes you'll see people chain a higher quality amp after a lower quality amp stage, ie: using a dedicated headphone amp from the ipod headphone jack. At first such an arragnement seems counterproductive - why would you want to add the distortion from two amps into the signal chain - however it's not necessarily as bad as it seems. By feeding the ipod amp into another amp, you're presenting the ipod a different load than that of a headphone. Typically, the input impedance of an amp is very high (10,000 - 100,000 ohms, compared to 32 - 300 for headphones), which is easier to drive (meaning lower distortion) for many preamp and headamp stages. Same with people who are using their sources (ie: soundcard) to directly drive headphones. By adding a dedicated amp, they take the burden off the source's output stage so that the overall distortion goes down (or becomes more euphonic ).
[Tomb-headfi]
Yep, you are correct - IMHO. Personally, I prefer 1/2 to 3/4 of the volume control, but it depends on quality of the source. You are correct to suspect that you can start clipping with the source prior to an amp if the volume is too high (assuming no line out, of course).
Turn the volume too low, and your amp may be amplifying more noise than signal. I truly believe that without a line out, it's an experimental process.
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[NotJeffBuckley-Hydrogenaudio]
Huh. I didn't know you post here, MirrorSaw. Yeah, you need a headphone amplifier to adequately power high- and low- impedance headphones; low impedance headphones require more current to accurately reproduce bass frequencies (and thus benefit more from large coupled capacitors, such as the 2200 microfarads found in the PA2V2 or the 1800 microfarads in the Go-Vibe), while high impedance headphones require more voltage to excurse the drivers and avoid op-amp clipping.
The current provided by a typical portable audio player is usually less than 15ma per channel, which can lead to notable distortion with low impedance headphones that require more current draw - I'm not sure to which headphones you refer when you say "overwhelming majority;" I'm sure many of the exceptionally sensitive cheap headphones designed specifically for volume headroom and tuned for bass resonance are more than adequately driven by a portable player's voltage swing of less than 2v at less than 30ma total output current, but I wouldn't want to use less sensitive 32ohm headphones with any less than 50ma per channel available. Further, the capacitors are there primarily for dynamic headroom;
they supply current for particularly taxing excursions where an op-amp's steady output would be insufficient. That's the "real purpose" of coupled output capacitors, nothing nefarious there (although I agree that 2200microfarad is rather in excess of what is necessary, especially with a low voltage op-amp, but it extends the flat response considerably beyond the audible spectrum and into sub/hypersonics).
[steve999-Hydrogen Audio]
May I add..... buyer beware!!!
Headphone amplifier channel balance for low-level listening can be a major issue too, IMHO. Noise can be an issue both in terms of noise floor due to too high gain or just poor s/n ratio, and in terms of ground hum noise. Noise tends to be more of an issue with very sensitive low impedence phones like the MDR-V6s, especially if the gain is too high. An amp's ability to work around difficult ground-loop hum issues can be quite important, IMHO. These issues are what separate the good stuff from the just okay stuff, in my experience. A near-0 ohm impedance headphone amp will usually have the least impact on frequency response, though some phones are designed to be driven from an industry-standard 120-ohm jack. Some smaller battery-powered amps will have trouble driving very low-impedence phones without some small amount of bass rolloff (the ipod photo headphone out had this problem, as I understand it).
The biggest problem with high-impedence, low sensitivty phones like the HD600 and HD650 is usually not noise or channel balance at low levels but just getting them loud enough without pushing the amp's performance limits too far (resulting in clipping or distortion), and this is usually only an issue with battery-powered portable equipment. Most things that you plug in a wall will drive them very comfortably.
I use a Behringer UB802 mixer. The input gain is adjustable on two channels if you are a perfectionist. Or you can just use other channels with fixed gain. It drives my Senn HD580s and Beyer DT880s very easily, and my Sony MDR-V6s very quietly. My confidence in my UB802 increased when a friend took measurements on its big brother, the UB1202, and it did quite well for noise, frequency response, and distortion. Though I am not the expert on this stuff. The UB802 mixer also has bass, mid, and treble controls, and multiple inputs and outputs. And panning controls that you can use as a primitive (but continuously variable) crossfeed for old recordings with excessive or tacky stereo separation. And pretty flashing lights. Price: $60.
Expensive headamps edge on over into snake-oil-ville as price increases, IMHO. In many circumstances, a home receiver or home CD deck (with headphone jack) or computer sound card will provide solid amplification even with the HD600s or HD650s, IMHO. As to whether one could hear a difference versus an expensive headphone amp in an ABX test, I make no claims. I can tell you based on experience that any difference is not worth it to me, though. A $100 portable amp could be genuinely useful if you are going to use such hard-to-drive headphones as the HD600 or HD650 portably. Thing is, you could get a second pair of really nice and more practical headphones for portable use for the price of that portable amp.
If someone is thinking of paying $200 or $300 or more for the meager amount of amplification needed to drive a pair of headphones, I suggest taking the time to come to a better understanding of what you are paying for.
If someone at hydrogen audio asserts you need to pay that much for transparent headphone amplification, I say prove it. What is it -- T.O.S. 8? 
[niktheblak-Hydrogen audio]
I do notice that you used the phrase "get the proper sound out of them..." ... if "proper" means loud, then yes, you'll need a headphone amp to drive them to loud levels. If "proper" means a pleasant sound at decent normal listening levels, then a special headphone amp is not required.
Unfortunately just 'loud' doesn't quite cut it. The problem with computer/other line-outs is that they generally have high-impedance output and expect a very high-impedance load, such as 30,000Ω amplifier input. When someone plugs a 60Ω headphone into a line-out expecting 30,000Ω load, the frequency response characteristics of the line-out may change considerably. Probably the single most common phenomenon is attenuation of lower frequencies since they usually have the lowest impedance in most headphones. So you can achieve a sound that is 'loud' but still lacks a major proportion of the spectrum. Also when volume (load) is yet increased with such an underpowered source, pretty much anything can happen to the frequency response curve, but it almost certainly won't be flat. And at this point we've drifted a long way away from 'hi-fi'.
So basically a headphone amp's most useful purpose is to perform impedance matching between line-out and a pair of headphones. If you already have a low-impedance output expecting a low-impedance load (such as high quality headphone output of a mixer table), then you shouldn't have major problems driving headphones and don't need a headphone amp.
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[Wikipedia]
On the other hand, the final power amplifier stage of a typical audio device often introduces distortion. But "line out" is derived from some point before that final amplification takes place. So "line out" signals tend to be of higher quality than those from a speaker (or headphone) connector.
"Line in" expects the kind of signal "line out" provides. So you can typically connect the "line out" connector of one device with the "line in" of another. However, if you do this with a straight cable, and both devices are AC powered, you may run into ground - loop - hum.
A typical "Line in" inputs is actually a high impedance input with an impedance of around 10,000 ohms. When a "Line out" signal output, with its impedance of around 100 ohms, is connected to a high impedance "Line in" input like this one, the result is that most of the voltage (over 99%) appears across the input resistance, and almost none of the voltage is dropped across the output impedance. This is the desired effect. Since the impedances are far from matched, very little power is transferred, but the goal is not power transfer, it is voltage transfer. These are voltage signals (as opposed to current signals*) and it is the signal information that is desired, not power to drive a transducer (e.g. speaker) or (transmitting) antenna.
[Cnet Audio Glossary]
An audio jack on a sound card or other media device that outputs line-level (0.5- to 2-volt) analog signals. Suitable for sending signals to stereos, tape decks, and so on. By contrast, a headphone output can produce signals 10 or more times that strength.
AKG Y50
in Home Equipment
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The AKG Y50 are low-cost portable headphones, offering a cheaper alternative to the Beats Solo 2.
They’re on-ear, bold in design and have a slightly bassy sound that puts that extra bit of energy into your music. However, in usual AKG fashion, they keep enough of an eye on balance to keep audio obsessives happy. A bassy mess they are not.
Available for as little as £49, but generally seen around the £69 mark, the AKG Y50 are affordable wonders we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anyone. It’s not often we see budget headphones get this much this right.
http://www.enbetas.com/