LATEST ADDITIONS

I'm always surprised at headphone companies' efforts to make super-stylish in-ear monitors. 'Cause who's gonna stare into some stranger's ears on the subway? Personally, I'd never buy an IEM for its looks unless it had an image of Bandit on the side. But I have to admit Phiaton's new Moderna MS 200 looks pretty cool with its carbon fiber sides and red cables and accents.

Master Chief always seemed like Heinlein's ideal of a soldier: You never felt like he needed to sleep - just give him his ten thousand–mile check-ups and dust him off occasionally. In the opening scenes of Halo 4, Spartan 117 goes from sleep to trigger in a few moments, but that's enough to begin his journey to becoming human again.

Since Michael Phelps was seen sporting a pair in London this summer, Sol Republic headphones have been everywhere. And there's plenty of curiosity about the company itself, run by industry veterans Scott Hix and Kevin Lee, the son of Noel Lee - the Head Monster of Monster Cable, and the man who pretty much built today's headphone industry as the manufacturing force behind Beats. 

All well and good. But should you buy headphones endorsed by a guy with water in his ears?

While it’s easy to imagine that the federal government (in this case, the Copyright Office) is a bunch of Luddites, sticking to making laws about ancient or obsolete technologies and ignoring the new, the opposite is actually true.