ultrasone

AC Gears sells a wide variety of headphones and gadgets in Greenwich Village in NYC. It's not a huge space, but half of the store is devoted to in-ear and full-size headphones, and I recently spoke with founder Kohn Liu to learn more about his business. The brands and model lineup change from time to time, but right now he has around 50 headphones on display. Many are in the affordable range, but there's also a decent selection of high-end brands as well. AC Gears has most Grado models on display, including the top-of-the-line PS 1000. They also … Read more

Sometimes, you really do get what you pay for. In this week's roundup of CNET's top-rated gear, I'll explore some premium choices, but prepare yourself for sticker rage.

HTC One S shows T-Mobile customers how the other half lives Case in point: On T-Mobile, cheaper phone plans mean fewer high-end smartphone choices -- and by fewer, we mean no Android Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones at all...until now. This week, T-Mo joined the ICS club with the HTC One S, which our reviewer Brian Bennett calls T-Mobile's best phone yet. It's thinner than the iPhone 4S … Read more

All mobile phones have microphones and speakers. Hardly any have near-field communications chips. At least for now. And that's what a new company, Naratte, is planning on leveraging as it launches a technology that allows fast, secure, short-range, point-to-point communication over ultrasonic sound waves.

Compared with other device-to-device communication technology, its Zoosh tech is about as fast as NFC (the tap-to-communicate technology Google and other companies are pushing), but slower than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. However, like NFC, the "setup time" for communication is extremely fast--there's no waiting around for a handshake to be established between devices.

Naratte CEO Brett Paulson says, "We built an acoustic baseband in software," and he points to two big benefits to doing communication this way. First, it's cheap, since there's no additional hardware required on mobile devices. Big point-of-sale terminals, he says, can be retrofitted with microphones and speakers for about a dollar (they already have the input ports on their motherboards); smaller credit-card terminals might need a bit more hardware, but they can piggyback on the input ports that exist for barcode scanners.

The other big benefit: Paulson showed a Zoosh demo using Java on a currently available feature phone. In other words, this NFC competitor can be rolled out to the world as a download on pretty much every mobile handset there is. NFC requires new phones (or for people to put stickers on their existing phones.)

… Read more

Chemists at Bar-Ilan University in Israel say they have developed and successfully tested "killer paper" coated with silver nanoparticles--each roughly 1/50,000 the width of a human hair--that can fight bacteria such as E. coli and S. aureus.

Described in the American Chemical Society journal Langmuir, researcher Aharon Gedanken tells me that while colloidal silver is already widely used as an antimicrobial agent, what's new about his team's research is the process by which silver nanoparticles are deposited onto paper to develop antimicrobial properties.

The team was able to control both the thickness of the … Read more

The Grado PS-1000, Sennheiser HD 800, and Ultrasone Edition 8 full-size headphones all sound amazing. They're all expensive to buy, but if you listen to headphones with your hi-fi or computer, they might be worth the investment. Which one is right for you?

That depends. First, they sound very different from each other. To get the full scoop, read my CNET reviews of the Grado PS-1000, Sennheiser HD 800, and Ultrasone Edition 8 headphones.

My personal favorite was the Grado, as it was the most exciting to listen to. It seemed to bring out details more, and its dynamic impact was simply more visceral than the other two headphones. It worked well enough with my iPod, sounded acceptable with my Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver, and best with my Woo Audio WA6 Special Edition headphone amplifier.

Which reminds me, if you're going to spend big bucks on a headphone, check out dedicated headphone amplifiers. I've blogged about Woo's amps many times, and they offer models starting at $470. I will try to get around to covering other brands soon.

The Ultrasone was the bass champ of the three headphones. If you love bass and you want to feel it, check out the Edition 8. As I said in the review, it gets closer to the full sound of a large floor-standing speaker than the other headphones. It's also the most iPod/MP3 player-compatible deluxe headphone I've heard. I couldn't believe how good it made my iPod sound. … Read more

If you have ears, prepare to open them now.

I've just reviewed a bunch of contenders for the world's best full-size, over-the-ear headphone: Audio Technica ATH-W5000, Denon AH-D7000, Grado PS-1000, Sennheiser HD 800, Stax SR-007Mk2, and Ultrasone Edition 8 headphones--and all boast higher MSRPs than the JH Audio JH 13 Pro in-ear headphone.

Sure, full-size headphones can be used with iPods and MP3 players with varying degrees of success, but they're a lot more of a hassle to lug around than the JH 13 Pro. Honestly, I prefer the sound and comfort of over-the-ear models compared with in-ear headphones. Then again, the JH 13 Pro is a very different type of in-ear design, it uses six drivers--two woofers, two midranges, and two tweeters--to lower distortion compared with other in-ear designs. It's a difference I can hear.

The JH 13 Pro's resolution of fine detail is extraordinary, drums sound more realistic than I've heard from any other type of headphone. The JH 13 Pro is "fast," cymbals' shimmer and sparkle the way they do in real life, and when a drummer whacks his sticks against the drums' metal rims, the sound is more realistic. Dynamic oomph and slam are the best I've heard from an in-ear headphone.

The JH 13 Pro's bass goes deeper than any in-ear headphone to date, but it's the way these headphones decode palpable bass textures that's highly addictive. Electric, acoustic, and keyboard basses sound more different from each other with the JH 13 Pro. Switching over to Monster's excellent new Turbine Pro Gold in-ear headphone ($299) is startling, the Turbines sound mushy and muddled by comparison. The Monster has more mid-bass fullness, which some listeners may prefer. I do not.

The JH 13 Pro's midrange clarity is radically better than any in-ear 'phones I've used to date. Its bass, midrange, and treble are better balanced and accurate than what I'm used to from in-ear designs. … Read more

Germany has the high-end headphone market covered, as Beyer Dynamic, Sennheiser, and Ultrasone are all headquartered there.

Ultrasone is the newcomer of the group, but it's hardly new. It was founded in 1991 in Tutzing, close to the Alps in southern Germany. The headphones are manufactured in the U.S., Germany, Austria, and Taiwan.

Ultrasone has just announced a new flagship model, the HFI-2400 ($329). It features Ultrasone's S-Logic technology that promises to create "natural surround sound" by reducing pressure on the eardrum up to 40 percent. The new headphone also features ULE-technology that reduces electro-magnetic … Read more

Headphone lovers of the world unite! We now have our own wiki, Wikiphonia.

Headphones are hugely popular now, but they were around long before "i" and "Pod" ever got together. The history is long and deep, and Wikiphonia is a fantastic resource for anyone who wants to know more about headphone technology and related information.

Headphone geeks are a breed apart from audiophiles as I know them, but they're an even more intense bunch. One of the great things about headphonia is you can get in pretty deep without a big investment. Hard-core types like to build their own headphone amplifiers.

Wikiphonia has an entry that covers 1970s era USSR copies of Western headphone technologies and designs, "The copying was done out in the open, probably and correctly, they figured no one would start a conflict with a superpower over a few headphone patents."

For me, it all started with Sennheiser's HD 414. Its bright yellow earpads were super cool, and the sound was awesome. Back in the early 1970s it was a really big deal, a giant leap better than anything I'd ever heard. You can read all about it on Wikiphonia.… Read more

Q: I have been digging through the CNET Web site for a perfect set of on-ear or over-the-ear headphones for listening to music on the subway--but I just can't find a pair that fits all my needs. I'm not an audiophile, but I do need the headphones to be comfortable for extending listening, durable (head band that won't snap easily), and portable (not too bulky). Since I am using them on the subway, it'd be great if they offer some kind of noise cancellation (passive or active, whichever). And I'm a student, so I'm … Read more