Headphones

It seems like a bunch of companies have been listening to Episode 39 of crosstalk, and decided that headphones are the new near-field monitor. SPL came out with the "Phonitor" headphone monitor amp, and now Yamaha has come out with the RH10MS monitoring headphones. Will the skeptics be won over? Time will tell.  

SPL's lofty goal for their new Phonitor is to create a headphone amplifier that makes studio monitors less necessary. With a unique set of controllable parameters, they may just be on the way to doing just that.  

Josh speaks with Sonja at AKG's NAMM08 booth, and gets schooled on the differences between "circumaural" and "semiaural" designs. There's also a mention of "cuh-shins," which is some sort of Euro-unit of audio measurement, I'm assuming.  

M-Audio's been thinking a lot about studio monitoring, and with the new Studiophile Q40 headphones as well as the BX5a Deluxe and BX8a Deluxe studio monitors, expect to see and hear more M-Audio monitoring equipment in home studios around you.  

SM Pro Audio's HP6E is a six channel headphone amplifier with five inputs -- one specifically to mix in sounds like voice-overs or click tracks. The "E" in HP6E is SM Pro Audio's qualitative stamp on this model.  

A good headphone amplifier is suitable for a range of purposes, most of which are meant to make your musical life easier. SM Pro Audio releases the HP6E, a roided up version of their HP6 without any of the scandals or anything to do with baseball.  

When walking around a room, sound from a speaker changes, but when you're monitoring on headphones, the sound is constant. That's not the case with beyerdynamic's Headzone. The Headzone simulates an actual room, with changes in acoustic quality that track your movements.  

One of the most informative booths at AES was definitely the Livewires In-Ear Monitors booth where John Diles expounded upon the workings of the ear and the custom fitting of in-ear monitors while Gearwire's Gretchen Hasse...  

Livewires' John Diles fits Gearwire's Gretchen Hasse for a custom in-ear speaker system. Learn how to use an otoscope, but please remember that this is by no means actual medical training.

This is a Gearwire...  

John Diles and the team at Livewires just recently jumped on the bandwagon of custom fit in-ear monitors after noting the iPod phenomenon. They've already racked up quite a list of users including Toby Keith and Steely...  

LTB Audio has announced the Q-Bean, a wireless headphone solution based upon a transmitter connected to your source machine via USB. While we'd consider it for monitoring laptop-based remote recording situations, the...  

While on the floor of the 122nd AES Convention in Vienna, Austria we were approached by Willi Presutti, one of the representatives from the MB Quart booth. He asked me if I was happy with the headphones I was using while...  

Of the two new headphones that Audio Technica was showing at the 122nd AES convention one featured some very interesting technology not seen on a large scale before it's release in January. The ATH-ANC7 headphones use...  

Gearwire's Joe Wallace gets an earful from Mark Williams of PreSonus about the comapny's HP-60 headphone distribution amplifier for studios. The HP-60 was debuted at MusikMesse 2007 and sports some interesting features...  

Shure, Inc. announced today a series of raids in Thailand and India that caught a ring of counterfeiters manufacturing fake Shure microphones. The most recent operation, taking place with the help of a South Asian Shure...  

The Sensaphonics 3D Ambient active monitoring system lets you dial in external sounds as well as listen to your band's audio in this "why-didn't-we-think-of-it-ten-years-ago" in-ear monitoring product. A built-in mic brings...  

Australia's SM Pro Audio talks up their new HP 6 headphone amp. This model features multiple inputs in the back, and allows selective monitoring of those inputs. Get a look at the HP 6 multichannel headphone amp, (including...  

M-Audio's IE-30 earphones may look a bit like iPod earbuds, but these are professional-grade earphones made for musicians. There are two precision-balanced armature drivers, 26dB of isolation, and separate "canals" for high...  

AKG studio headphones

Gear Insider: In this video we take a look at two of AKG's best and brightest studio headphones - the K 240 and K 271 Studio. Both headphones have an impedence of 55 ohms for a loud, clear signal...  

Sony unveils the 7509 HD Headphones, which have a frequency range up to 80 kHz, far above most other headphones. The human ear can actually only hear sounds in the 20 Hz to 20 kHz range, but it has been theorized that frequencies...