New Products

Yamaha's hi-fi headphones of years past have many devotees (my own first pair of good cans was the much-loved HP-1), and while the company's mainly been concentrating on lower-end models for some years now, they've gone upscale again with today's announcement of three new Pro models, the 300, 400, and 500, which hearken ba

Logitech's 2008 acquisition of IEM leader Ultimate Ears was an interesting move given the ultra-high end and music professional orientation of the brand, and even more interesting is the fact that while the new Logitech UE lineup does include an IEM offering, the majority of the rebranded line lives outside the ear - and well outside it, in some cases.

Control. Having personally installed hundreds of systems in people’s homes, I can definitively say that at the end of the day, that’s what it all boils down to. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a system for a dedicated theater, a bedroom, or even a simple home theater in a box. Having the ability to easily control that system is what sets the good apart from the bad.

Another day, another dock - but wait. There's no dock on the new Phorus PS1 ($199). It's just a shelf. And the little Phorus PR1 ($149). That's no dock either. . .

If you've been keeping up with our headphone coverage, you know that the S+V team can come down a little hard on celebrity-branded models - too often, the name attached means nothing more than price-inflating licensing fees paid for showing up at a few press appearances.

Last night we got to check out the latest offering in Bang & Olufsen's wireless-lifestyle Play line, a wireless speaker system known as the BeoPlay A9 ($2,699). Now, obviously at that price it's got to offer something more than the average dock, and indeed it does. 

Over the past few weeks, we've been looking into some promising new room correction solutions, using both frequency-domain and time-domain approaches. If you've been wondering why nobody's been applying such thinking to headphones, think again - in-ear monitor innovator JH Audio has been on the case.