Symphonium Crimson - One persons two year journey to find the One First it is important to know this is just a review, one persons opinion (YMMV). The unit being reviewed was purchased by me at CanJam London for full retail. Who am I, what do I value in audio reproduction and what’s my basis for comparison. Well I started down the audiophile rabbit hole with speakers in 1992 with my first pair of Alon 1 speakers. These were highly transparent but with deep tight bass response. As they years went on I fell in love with horn based speakers like the...

HiFiman HE 1000 SE Review Introduction: While I am not as active in the headphone community today, I was very active in the headphone community from 2005 to about 2014. Starting back in the early days :) when the Senn 650 and Grado RS-1 were the top in production headphones (for the most part). Yes we had the R10, K1000, Qualia and various Audio Technica woodies and L3k but for the most part they were limited in availability. Today we are in a golden age (prices withstanding) of top end headphones, almost an embarrassment of riches. This was my...

First huge thanks to Justin Wilson at Headamp.com for the loaner. I had these along with two others for about one week to play with. After some back and forth I settled in on these as the tonality was far superior than the other two models.. I tested these with a variety of tracks form Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Pearl Jam, Shelby Lynn, Norah Jones and Led Zeppelin. My source was a Schiit Yggy GS and Lumin T2 and the amp is a custom FET based amp. Vocals were sublime with these headphones with great body and lifelike presence.They do a nice job of...

  I first caught wind of the 3a about 18 months ago in the cryptic words of the designer Jerry Harvey, telling me that he had something really big on the horizon. Prior to CanJam Chicago word spread of a very cool innovation that Jerry was going to show at the event. Most that heard the potential of the 3a that day were blown away at the increase in quality over even the already outstanding JH 13 or 16. The concept was to take IEMs and create crossovers and amps that use sound gains made in high end live sound and high end studio monitors. Many...

Last month Craig Uthus of Eddie Current debuted a new amp at a smallish gather of friends in NorCal. I've heard many amps by Craig including those under the old Moth banner as well as his current name Eddie Current and I've been impressed by his output,Under theEddie Current name he has helped define the high end space with amps like the BA and HD25 hitting it out of the park for me. I've owned a few of Craig's amps notably one of the original Moth 2a3s that was a visual masterpiece and sonically one of my all time favorites. To this day it is the...

Portable audio is something I've had a love hate relationship with for a long time. Growing up in NY and later working in the 5 boroughs with an hour commute at times the three daily papers, a Walkman and a half dozen tapes made the journey tolerable and sometimes fun. I'd always spent the money to get a good deck and even back then I'd trash the stock earbuds and trow down $50 or so for upgraded headphones. Later I migrated to minidisc and found atrac to sound great. When I joined HeadFi I jumped headfirst into the rabbit hole of portable rigs and...