I purchased them in London. RHA don't have a presence in Japan.   However, I am moving to Auckland in 2 weeks, so I will give the warranty a shot, after I arrive.

The HP-A3 soundstage to my ears doesn't have much depth at all with the Denon D7000s. Width is good though. I guess it had to give something up at this price point and physical size.   My unit has the same level of channel imbalance but it's not an issue for me as I don't listen at very low...

I agree with the sound quality descriptions. I dont think the build quality is all that good however. Possibly, I'm being harsh considering the price but the cable gets very easily permanently kinked and the cloth cable jacket is starting to come off my pair after 5 months.    

A new review of the HP-A3: http://noblehifi.blogspot.com/2012/12/fostex-hp-a3-review.html

I'm pretty sure they are designed to go around a uncased device, a slim case is pushing it.

You will want to go the largest Yodabashi in Akihabara and for second hand definitely e-earphone also in Akihabara, it's annoyingly hard to find though, very small sign and its on about the 5th floor, so you need to take the elevator. Lots of great first hand stuff there as well.

Quote: XLD does this on Mac for free.

Quote: How do you explain Apple not selling ALAC in the iTunes store?

I don't think the express has great range, based on what I have seen with the older models, it's small so can't have a very large antenna in there. The airport exteme is supposed to be good, but a cheaper linksys, belkin or whatever should give you just as good possibly better signal.

The airport express is a good quality wireless access station, it won't replace your home hub completely though, you will still need that to convert your incoming connection to Ethernet. A new completely new version of iTunes is supposed to be coming out later this month, at least it's new...

Apple came out publicly in favour of DRM free music one year before Amazon got rid of DRM from music (from the big four record labels) which was one year before Apple removed it from all music they sell. Amazon was in a stronger position as they had much lower sales than Apple and record...

That's one way to look at, and there could be some truth to it. Another way to look at it is they didn't want to commit to a technology and could change in unforeseen ways and require users to transcode entire iTunes libraries. If Apple wanted to lock in users files, why did they successfully...

Wow you hate a company due to a misguided belief that they want to control you? No. They want to control their primary technologies in order to control the user experience. Their goal is an excellent user experience. If you want to tinker, don't buy in to it, easy fix. No need to hate. They...

The fact that Android phones outsell iPhones does not equate to Android being the dominate mobile music device. You can not discount the hundreds of million of iPods sold. Also I would be willing to bet that the percentage of iPhones sold that are actually used for music is higher than for...

The wooden cups on most of the headphones that have wooden cups are brown.

I have the Sennheiser adapter which is also excellent, very similar to the Grado but less retro looking.

The BitPerfect app costs much less and the sound quality is in the same ballpark as Amarra. Doesn't support FLAC though but does support the Apple Remote app and you can use the same ALAC files on an iPod.

ALAC is open source now so is just as free as FLAC is, and arguably better supported. And the two formats definitely sound the same if the player is written properly. Some of the information about uncompressed formats sounding better is very out of date. A modern CPU will only spend a single...

There is a great free program for Mac called XLD that will convert FLAC to Apple lossless (ALAC). It's fast and once you set the conversion codec in the preferences you can convert tracks with a simple right click - open with XLD. You can convert back to FLAC at anytime and the file will be...

And the HP-A7 is 0.09. I wonder how the HP-A3 compares.

I know if I had the TH-900s I could bring myself to like the urashi finish, but as it stands having seen the urashi in person a few times and owning the D7000s, I like just like the rich mahogany more. I think the red is slighty tacky.   The TH-900s are double the price that the D7000s were...

Yes you can use Apples own Remote app on an iPad or iPhone to control iTunes remotely. It is very similar to an iPod interface, works great.

Any day now for the k551's, they have iDevice controls so that could be a positive or negative for you. I'm pretty sure I had a good seal as I have a large noggin, seemed bass light to me out of an iPhone, I would like to hear them amped to compare.

Slightly more cumbersome because you have to roll them to compress em and then hold em in your ears for a few secs while they expand. I find tri flanges to feel the same as stabbing my ears with quetips.

The new Denons get mixed reviews, generally not as we'll liked as the old Denon D2000 or the 550s. I suggest you read all the reviews and threads you can find on them. If you're a bass head the D600s will give you more impact than the 550s. Personally I think the 550s are a bit bass light but...