Headphone Amp/DAC Reviews

Summer’s here, and it’s time to hit the road. Automotive entertainment used to be restricted to radio and whatever you brought onboard in the form of prerecorded music — from 8-tracks to discs and later iPods. But now that smartphones and tablets have made Internet connectivity possible in the car, a whole new world of content has opened up on the road.

We gathered five of the coolest connected- car gadgets and took them out for a shakedown cruise.

Along with a couple of other choice items - the Mode M40 noise-cancelling full-size headphones and the G-17 AirPlay dock - Klipsch has released the S4A, an Android-friendly incarnation of the popular S4 in-ear headphone.

Between increasing your system’s audio channel count to 9.1 or 11.1 and upgrading to a bigger, brighter, or even higher-resolution 4K video display, there’s no shortage of ways to take your home theater to the next level. And while such improvements can certainly add excitement, the basic home theater experience still pretty much remains the same.

The thing that most home theaters can’t do is put you into the action, literally letting you feel what is happening onscreen. The sliding of gravel under the tires. The rock and sway of a boat. The thud-thud-thud of a jet being riddled with gunfire. Providing that experience is the role that D-Box fills.

It's curious enough to find venerable speaker companies getting into the headphone business, but the announcement today by Apple accessories specialists InCase of an all-new - and very complete - line of headphones is even more of a surprise.

Remote controls can essentially be clumped into three categories: low-, middle-, and high-end. At the low end are DIY models that offer basic “all-in-one” control functions and are meant to replace lost or broken manufacturer-issued remotes. High-end models require professional programming and provide powerful automation features, IP and RS-232 control, and radio-frequency operation.