October 2011
In 1991, Etymotic Research launched the first commercial earphone for music playback that was designed to be inserted in the ear canal. This created a whole new product category that goes by various names: in-ear headphones, canal phones, insert phones, etc. I prefer the widely used term in-ear monitors (IEMs). Whatever you call them, these types of earphones have a few basic characteristics. Insertion into the ear canal avoids many of the variations in outer-ear (pinna) shape and headphone positioning that can affect the perceived sound of normal headphones. Depending on the design of the eartip, IEMs can offer a significant amount of isolation from ambient noise, which allows for much lower and thus safer listening levels, as well as increased perception of details. Many IEMs are also highly efficient, so they can be adequately driven directly from the output of a portable audio device. Those characteristics, combined with their very small size, make IEMs an excellent choice for listening on the go.
From their extensive work with developing tools for audiologists, the engineers and scientists at Etymotic came up with a target curve that represents the ideal frequency response for earphones. They then tweaked that curve to account for the 5dB boost in the top octave on most CDs, and an equivalent 5dB cut that they found was characteristic of most professional studio monitor speakers. The result was the ER-4 S -- their first product, launched in 1991 and still available today. The only trouble with that original design was that its low sensitivity -- 0.1V for 90dB at 1kHz -- requires dedicated headphone amplification. In 1994, Etymotic introduced the ER-4P. It had a higher sensitivity -- 102dB at 0.1V -- and could therefore be driven directly from the output of almost any portable audio device.
Ask an audiophile for a list of iconic speaker brands, and Britain’s Bowers & Wilkins is likely to be at or near the top. Since its founding in the 1960s, B&W has produced a range of loudspeakers offering truly exceptional performance at their various price points. Their flagship 800 series delivers a world-class listening experience for what is, in high-end-audio terms, a relatively reasonable price. Use of B&W monitors in many of the world’s preeminent studios makes them a literal reference for how recordings are supposed to sound. 
April Music is a name with which frequent readers of the SoundStage! Network will be familiar. Based in South Korea, this audio company has been building high-end components since 1998, and over the years several of their products have been reviewed on the SoundStage! Network websites. 
The headphone market is dominated by a few very large professional-audio companies, but there are some smaller firms -- e.g., Grado and Ultrasone -- that offer significant products at various price points. What haven’t historically been seen in the headphone world are the one- and two-person garage operations that make up a substantial part of the rest of high-end audio. Designing and making your own headphones generally means designing and making your own drivers, and neither is a trivial task. The mounting structures/enclosures can be very different for different driver types, and their production requires either dedicated tooling or substantial amounts of labor. When a small company comes out with a pair of headphones, these are usually modifications, or even mere rebadgings, of someone else’s product. That’s not the case here. The Audeze LCD-2 headphones ($945 USD) were designed from scratch and are built entirely by Audeze in the USA. That’s a huge undertaking for a small company, but Audeze thinks they’ve got something special and can directly compete with the big boys. 
PSB’s new CS1000 ($499 USD per pair) isn’t the first outdoor/indoor speaker on the market, but it’s the first from PSB, which automatically makes it one of the most interesting: it was engineered by Paul Barton, one of the world’s leading speaker designers. Barton told me that he didn’t want to offer a merely decent product, but one that produced the legendary sound quality and possessed the high value that PSB is known for worldwide. 
Consider, if you will, the top of the world, Everest, where the air is thin, the view Godly, and getting there and back the stuff of deadly legend. At the top of Velodyne’s subwoofer world is the Digital Drive 1812 Signature Edition, a monstrous edifice with two long-throw drivers measuring 18” and 12”, twin 1250W amplifiers, and enough cojones to be heard, well, at the top of the world. Just below the DD-1812 is Velodyne’s Digital Driveplus series -- think K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, and so on -- each of which scales dizzying heights, but doesn’t quite summit at the top of the world. The driver sizes and model names of the DD+ series are four: 18", 15", 12”, and 10”. We’re going to have some fun with the 10-incher, which, unless I miss my guess, is, despite its size, one special sub.
I do most of my headphone listening at home using a dedicated headphone amplifier and full-sized cans, but when I’m listening on the go or at work I prefer in-ear monitors (IEMs) -- a type of earphone that is inserted into the ear canal. Not only do their small sizes make IEMs more convenient than regular headphones, but I appreciate the level of isolation that most of them provide. I also like the fact that IEMs can be adequately driven directly from the output of an iPod or other portable device. 
Sony reinvented portable music reproduction with its Walkman cassette player in the early 1980s, and in no time at all Walkmen appeared on waistbands around the world. But while the Walkman was a smash hit, it didn't spur an entire new line of accessories, as has the Apple iPod. Apple didn't invent portable music, but it sure gave a lot of companies a reason to do some innovating of their own.