There's more to Fujiya Avic headphone festivals than drinks with the mates. TE100, the fruit of a partnership between FitEar and Fostex, will be on display. It is a dynamic/balanced armature hybrid with what looks like a metal treble tube.
Read moreOcharaku Sakura Plus has landed
An afternoon of good tea and shop talk at Mr. Yamagishi's office in Tokyo, I came back with a Sakura Plus review loaner. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I drank too much tea. Nor am I embarrassed that the Sony PCM-D100 recorder tickled my fancy. Together (and I like to think that Mr. Yamagishi enjoyed my presence) we geeked out over high altitude tea, weird audiophile recordings, and of course: Sakura Plus (black) and Akazakura Plus (red).
Read moreDAR: Heck-a-slammin' IEMs from Noble Audio
Having shot Noble Audio's commercial CIEMs and UIEMs since the end of 2014, I am intimately familiar with the look, feel, and build of each and every model. John Darko puts the competitive IEM market into perspective.
Read moreOcharaku Flat4-Sakura Plus / Akazakura Plus debut and touch and try event
On 5 March Oak Village and Ocharaku’s latest Flat4-櫻Plus (Flat4-Sakura Plus), Flat4-緋櫻Plus (Flat4-Akazakura Plus) will be unveiled at an event called “Challenging the limits of earphone manufacturing” in Jiyugaoka. Both companies will talk up their awesome tech and techniques and at the end, attendees will get to touch and try both earphones.
Read moreTitan 3 and 5 - Dunu about the finish
A bevy of grammatical mistakes didn't bar the publish of my Dunu Titan 3 and Titan 5 review at Headfonia. And, while I’m probably as negative as I’ve been for a product whose sound I really like, I hope you’ll see a method behind the grammatical madness.
Read moreEyes on Jupiter - Campfire Audio's case for patience
Metal bolts. Metal fascias. Metal skeletons. Metal bonnets. Full metal jacket. Metal up yours, all the time. That, my friends, is Campfire Audio’s flagship earphone, Jupiter. In October I reviewed a pre-production model. From what I understood at the time, its cable, ear pieces, fit, and sound, were final. The body? By late summer, anyone’s guess was as good as mine.
Read moreCampfire Audio's case for naked leather
Jupiter pre-production case to the left; final case to the right
Ultrasone and Sennheiser toe the smart line: leather cases, clean lines, respectable mass-market designs. FitEar cater to geeks looking for long-toothed products with great resale value. Jerry Harvey Audio push the boundaries of technology. Noble Audio are masters of extravagant design and itsy bitsy tooling.
Read moreThoughts on the Noble Audio K10u
Back in September, I shot Noble Audio's new flagship universal, the K10u. It was an ultra-light, jewel-like, and hollow non-working sample. It was carefully packed and pretty, ready for careful photography.
Read moreDARko: Sony's Just ear custom IEMs, just for Japan
Digital Audio Review's latest, a ditty about Sony's geeked-out custom earphone line, Just Ears, is a good, tempting read. But it's just as poignant:
Read moreA cracked Earsonics Velvet
My review of the Earsonics Velvet was delayed, first because both earphones cracked, and second, because their substitutes arrived in the midst of an intractably involved review queue. Despite being a bit cheaper (at least in Japan) than the S-EM6, I preferred Velvet. It fits better and is tunable. It has more edge. It is a fun earphone.
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