Brent Butterworth

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Décor-friendly form factor
Beautiful build quality
Surprisingly easy installation
Minus
Low output

THE VERDICT
The Habitat1 has a terrific industrial design that may work where a traditional sub won’t, but don’t expect miracles.

Almost every subwoofer on the market today is a boring, bulky black box, designed with hardly a thought about how the thing’s going to look in a living room. With its new Habitat1 subwoofer, REL joins the small group of manufacturers who’ve put serious thought into making their subwoofers blend in with room décor.

Room correction systems that optimize your audio system for the acoustics of your room have been around for more than a decade — but frankly, they’ve never won me over, and I’m finally starting to understand why.

The 808 headphones prove I'm way hipper than any of our West Coast headphone testing panel, who range from 10 to almost 20 years younger than me. "You can tell from the name it's targeted to hip-hop fans," I told them.

The $1,299 K3003 seems as if it were designed to be the official IEM of the one-percenters. One look at the stainless-steel earpieces tells you it’s something exclusive and different. It’s different inside, too, with two balanced armatures instead of just one. As one might expect from a $1,299 IEM, it comes with a snazzy and unique leather case, although the case is relatively bulky.