The AKG K550 revisited. At the time, shortly after I bought my Audio Technica A900Xs I had auditioned the AKG's and I felt my choice for the A900Xs was the right one. I felt the K550s had this weird grating low treble peak that showed up just too often, unlike the low-treble/high mid peak of the Denon D5000s that only got aggressive ocassionally. The price at the time for the K550s was 300 euro, the A900Xs I got for just 150 euro. Fast forward in time: the K550 (MKII) now sell for 150 US dollar and encouraged by some reviewers who mention that the...

Lumia 640 LTE I never owned a portable device (apart from a Sony Walkman in the 80's) because I never felt the use of it. Just out of curiosity, not expecting much, I plugged my Sony MDR-Z7 in my newly bought Lumia 640 and started listening to Youtube videos and Spotify. "Pretty good sound", I was thinking and I decided to import some music to my phone. I bought an 64GB Micro SD card and soon regretted I hadn't bought a 128GB card right away, because simply put the sound I get is superior to any CD-player/ amp combo I ever had or auditioned.  The...

These headphones generally are excellent. They possess this remarkable mixture of openness and intimacy at the same time. There’s a true sense of soundstage, with a good width and depth and still they manage to sound pretty direct, upfront and dynamic. Their tonal balance is well judged, with a (slightly bigger than) slight emphasize on the low mids and mid bass, which gives any music a pleasant body, I particularly like this with classical. The highs are spot on, I never encountered any nasty sibilance.   As said they generally are great…when...

I find it difficult to get used to the sound of this little amp. In comparison with the amp I used for years, the headphones-out my old faithfull Marantz PM7200 the sound is superior in many ways. There's more depth, a cleaner, more fluid tonality, better layering of instruments and finally no more humming/buzzing of the transformer, the main reason I got this amp. But the sound isn't as wide. With some recordings my ears miss something, especially my left ear craves for more sound, it wants the music to fill out the left channel and beyond. This...

Audio Purists steer clear of them, because they need to be EQ-ed to get the best out of them, because one thing you will immediately notice is the sheer lack of treble. This is great with harsh recordings but even than it just sounds unnatural to me, give me sibilance over a huge treble roll-off anytime. The lack of highs is a real shame because overall the tonality is spot-on, instruments, vocals all sound very natural and real, they have enough warmth and body to be called musical. Luckily EQ-ing is very easy, iTunes preset "more highs" simply...