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HiFiMan HE1000 V2 headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

December 2016

Why are they reviewing these headphones again?

If you’re thinking that, I don’t blame you. At a glance, the HiFiMan HE1000 V2s look just like the HE1000s, and the original price of $2999 USD remains unchanged. Look closer, though, and you can see that the V2s are different in many ways. The HE1000s have been my reference for high-end headphone sound ever since I reviewed them in October 2015. I had to wonder why HiFiMan had changed them, and what effects those changes would have on their sound.

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December 2016

ECM 5702466
Format: CD (4)

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

David Mott -- baritone saxophone master, former music department head at York University, and martial artist -- once told me that the best musicians play without ego. By creating an unmediated flow of ideas, artists like John Coltrane channel something approaching the divine.

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Final Sonorous III headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

November 2016

Final is a brand from Japan that specializes in exotic, high-end headphones decorated with lots of shiny metal bits. I’ve seen Final headphones at a few headphone shows, but otherwise have rarely encountered them. That’s true of a surprising number of small headphone companies, which seem to do most of their sales through the Internet. When I found out about the Sonorous III headphones, a closed-back design priced competitively at $399 USD, my curiosity was piqued.

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November 2016

Carol Reed Channels Alfred Hitchcock

The Criterion Collection 523
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

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Sir Carol Reed (1906-1976) was a British film director best known for three masterpieces: Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and The Third Man (1949). After this brief flash of genius, his films went relatively unheralded until Oliver! (1968), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.

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November 2016

The No.1 speaker brand in the US is now Amazon, with a 26% market share. It took Amazon less than two years to attain this rank.

Those shocking facts should tell you where audio is headed. While the AmazonBasics line of cheap Bluetooth speakers does well, Amazon’s meteoric success in audio is due in large part to the Echo, a voice-command speaker that has sold some five million units since its launch a year and a half ago, and is expected to sell twice that in 2017.

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November 2016

Expect the unexpected from Grace Digital and you’ll never be disappointed. Hot on the heels of their EcoPebble Bluetooth speaker-powerbank-flashlight, which I reviewed last month, comes another waterproof powerbank combo -- but this one’s solar powered.

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Beyerdynamic T 5 p headphones measurements can be found by clicking this link.

November 2016

The new, second-generation version of Beyerdynamic’s T 5 p headphones embodies three trends I’m happy to see. First is a new interest in closed-back, audiophile-oriented headphones. I generally prefer the open-back sound, but many audiophiles must listen while surrounded by the sounds of family members or office colleagues, and open-back models let all that noise through. Second is an apparent trend toward a more natural, less treble-heavy voicing in audiophile headphones, which I noted in my review of the Sennheiser HD 800 S ’phones. Third is a trend toward greater sensitivity in audiophile headphones, to make them more practical to use with smartphones and tablets.

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November 2016

Chesky 389
Format: 24-bit/192kHz AIFF download

Musical Performance

Sound Quality

Overall Enjoyment

From Norah Jones to my friend and homegirl Kellylee Evans, there has been a trend among up-and-coming women jazz singers to make the jump to more commercial music as soon as they make their initial breakthrough. Who can blame them? Pop is where the large audiences -- and money -- live.

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October 2016

Compact, portable DACs that plug into a laptop’s USB port, extract up to 24-bit/96kHz digital audio using the jitter-eliminating asynchronous protocol, and provide amplified output for headphones and line-level output for preamps, are common enough these days. But in 2012, when AudioQuest introduced its first DragonFly DAC, the concept turned heads. The most attention-grabbing element was no doubt that the DragonFly was the size and shape of a USB memory stick. That such tiny hardware could make possible the playback of high-resolution audio through headphones -- not to mention a high-end audio system -- seemed nothing short of amazing.

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October 2016

Bigger-than-Life Falstaff from Orson Welles on Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 830
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment

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Extras

William Shakespeare was a hero to Orson Welles, who spent much of his career trying to make definitive film versions of the plays. Welles directed an excellent Othello (1951), and his experimental Macbeth (1948) was a flawed masterpiece -- in both, he played the title role. But his greatest homage to the Bard was Chimes at Midnight (1965), which gives a different view of the story of Falstaff and Prince Hal in being a pastiche of parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

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