Archive for Reviews

Sony SA-NS500 Review

While we may be a little partial here at ABI to some great sounding headphones paired with a clean sounding DAP on the go, there are surely those times when you just want to share your tunes with everyone around you. Those of us that don’t venture into the iOS world have a little harder time pairing up to a speaker dock, but there are still some choices out there. This is when the Sony SA-NS500 portable speaker comes into play. A portable speaker rated up to 8 hours of operation without being plugged in, 4 tweeters spreading 360 degree sound, and an upward firing woofer packaged in a….dare we say eye catching design, is sure to land on our radar. To top it off, the NS500 is DLNA compatible, Airplay compatible, and is set up for Sony’s Party Streaming feature to spread music around your house in different rooms wirelessly. How does this intriguing package stack up to the dime a dozen companion speakers out there? You’re going to have to read on to find out. Continue reading…

Soundmagic E30 Review

After being very positively surprised by the Soundmagic E10, it goes without saying that their slightly pricier brethren, the E30, should get the same review treatment as well. ‘Pricier’ here means a difference of a whopping five currency units – 35 vs. 40, either US dollars or Her Majesty’s pounds, depending on where you live.

The E10 and E30 actually look nothing alike, the former being an aluminum barrel-shaped IEM, the latter being a plastic over-the-ear fit one. However, once they’re in the ears, the Soundmagic family resemblance is easily spotted. Read on for an in-depth look at the E30, and a comparison to the earlier reviewed E10. Continue reading…

Brainwavz B2 review

After taking a closer look at the Brainwavz Beta and M2, it’s time to review their current flagship product, the B2.

Contrary to other Brainwavz IEMs, the B2 doesn’t use a dynamic driver; they sport a dual balanced armature to create all those wonderful sounds – not just any armature at that, but the widely used Knowles TWFK, the same one found in the Jays q-Jays, Audio Technica ATH-CK10, Ultimate Ears UE700, or the Fischer Audio DBA-02 (which also use the same OEM design as the B2).

Read on to find out how the B2 fare in the sub-$200 price range of in-ear phones. Continue reading…

FiiO E6 Portable Headphone Amp Review

 

FiiO is a Chinese audio company that should need no introduction by now. Among all the headphone amp, soundcard, and cable manufacturers they are probably the one with the best bang-for-buck ratio, consistently delivering high quality products for a very fair price.

Their older tiny portable amp model – the E5 – is still quite popular among users, and seriously well performing for its $20 price tag. Let’s see if FiiO could up the ante a notch with the E5’s recently introduced successor, the E6. Continue reading…

Cowon D3 Plenue Review

Many reviews have already been written about the Cowon D3. Mine’s certainly late to the party, but for good reason: after seeing the somewhat underwhelming performance of the D3 with its initial Android 2.1 firmware, I told myself to wait until the release of the inevitable 2.3 upgrade before I give the D3 a closer look.

Now that yummy ‘Gingerbread’ has arrived on Cowon’s first foray into the smartphone-without-a-phone realms, there’s no more holding back. Continue reading…

Soundmagic E10 Review

Soundmagic (or SoundMAGIC, as they write it) is one of the older Chinese headphone brands that’s available on the international market – and one that I shamefully neglected to review for way too long.

Many of their products got high marks in reviews and are often recommended as inexpensive quality IEMs. Their PL30, priced at less than $30, feature a bass dial like the much pricier Sennheiser IE8, and their PL50 are among the least expensive balanced armature driver IEMs. Both of these have a big fan base and helped to build the reputation of Soundmagic as a manufacturer of good sounding gear for a fair price.

Well, I missed to review those two popular phones, but now I have their newly released E10 in my hands (or rather, ears), and I hope I can make up for my negligence towards the Soundmagic brand. Continue reading…

Cowon C2 Review

One thing’s for sure: never bet on what name/number Cowon is coming up for consecutive players in a series, you will most definitely be guessing wrong.

The D2/D2+ was a very popular player for its time, some four years ago, and many people craved for a more modern successor ever since it was released. Recently, when the D3 was announced, there were quite some outcries to be heard since it was a large Android phone-without-a-phone, with nary a resemblance to the D2 at all.

Enter the newly released C2. As I said, do not try to make sense of Cowon’s naming schemes – the C2 is ‘the real D3’, so to speak. It actually is still more of a D2 than anything else – basically the same hardware, the same form factor, the same screen, more or less the same functionality as its four year old ancestor. The most obvious differences are in the looks of the user interface, the move from a full-sized SD slot to MicroSD, the use of a power/hold button instead of a slider, and the addition of a speaker on the back.

Does that mean Cowon’s decision to move this revamped D2 one letter down the alphabet is a step back? Not necessarily, there are certainly some features to be found in the C2’s firmware that are fit for a 2011 player. Read on for the full review.  Continue reading…

Brainwavz M2 Review

While MP4Nation’s Brainwavz Beta I reviewed some time ago were ok-ish sounding for their $30 price tag – but didn’t really exceed in any aspect over their similarly priced peers – Brainwavz now upped the ante with the introduction of the M2 in-ear phones.

The M2 are a bit more expensive than the aforementioned Betas, going for around $50, but to my ears they sound at least twice as good, so all is fine.

I am quite impressed by how far Brainwavz have climbed the audio quality ladder since the last time I tried some of their products. Read on to find out more about the M2.

Continue reading…

Star Wars Lightsaber MP3 Player Review

For many people, Star Wars is only 6 movies that came out in the cinema between 1977 and 2005. Actually, you should not forget that Star Wars it’s also an expanded universe, probably one of the biggest fictional universe ever invented by human being: there are books, comics, video games, TV series etc… Well it’s an almost limitless universe that goes far beyond the 6 famous movies. Generally there is no time for rest in the movies as the action is everywhere! But have you already wondered what the Jedi and Sith are doing once you turned off your DVD player? They do sport, they play parlour games, they organize droid fights, they chat on facebook, but they also sometimes get bored between two missions, just like you and me. Then it’s time to get out their lightsaber to listen to music. Indeed, what isn’t written in any encyclopedia is that Jedi and Sith generally have foresight and include a small mp3 player in the lightsaber when they design and make it.

A website is selling lightsaber mp3 players. At first that looked quite dubious since every lightsaber is supposed to be unique and built by its owner but finally I found their speech reassuring enough: “Generic MP3 players from fly-by-night operations in China cost about $2.70 each in bulk. Add an FM radio function and you might bump the price up by about $0.45 each. We don’t want those. We want Taito’s officially licensed Star Wars Light Saber Kei MP3 Player which isn’t generic. It’s specialized and looks like a light saber handle with nifty and ornate detailing. Won’t find that in a no-frills generic player.” Once you have read that, you’ll agree with me it’s impossible to resist buying one! Of course I got the one of Darth Vader. No that the lighsaber of Luke Skywalker (Darth Vader’s son for people living in another world) is ugly but the dark side of the Force is more attractive, isn’t it?

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Digizoid ZO Portable Subwoofer Review

Digizoid – or, digiZoid, as they write it – is a relatively young company from Arizona that specializes in sound enhancing techniques. Their patent-pending technology called Smartvector promises to improve several aspects of an audio signal originating from any source – be it from a portable MP3 player, be it in a recording studio used during mixing/mastering, be it while watching a movie on a home cinema setup, be it in a live DJ setup.

Since Digizoid are very secretive about their technology, it is easier to say what Smartvector is not: it is not a run-off-the-mill bass booster, it is not an EQ, it is not some psychoacoustic algorithm, it is not digital. Smartvector operates in the analog domain; it recovers the signal’s dynamic range, expands the spatiality (soundstage), and extends the low-frequency cutoff of a speaker/driver, making it deliver lower note extension than generally possible. I don’t know how they do it, but it doesn’t affect the THD (total harmonic distortion) of the signal, so they certainly don’t go the cheap route of harmonics enhancers/exciters.

Digizoid’s first commercial product utilizing Smartvector technology is the ZO, a portable amp, or “personal subwoofer”, as they call it. The ZO uses only a portion of Smartvector, named Lofreq. Unlike a still-theoretical Fullspec variant, affecting the whole audible frequency range, the ZO only operates on frequencies up to about 1 kHz.

Being a fan of natural sound reproduction – contrary to ‘neutral’ – I have to say that the ZO is the best thing I’ve heard so far in portable sound enhancements. Until now Cowon’s BBE and Mach3Bass have been the cream of the crop to my ears, as far as putting some excitement in ‘polite’ phones is concerned. The ZO however is the new king of crisp, precise, yet bassy sound, if you ask me.

Don’t be put off by the “personal subwoofer” slogan. The ZO is not some cheap boombox replacement for trunk rattlers. It is a very refined sounding tool to make audio more enjoyable – without damaging any part of it. Read on if it’s the thing for you.

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