Items tagged with Audiophile
When it comes to music, delivering high-quality sound to your ears can make listening experience much more immersive. If you decide to stream music from Spotify, that quality can vary from song to song depending on several factors. To combat this, Spotify will begin offering Premium subscribers the option to upgrade to Spotify HiFi to listen to songs in “CD-quality, lossless audio format.” Initially announced at Spotify’s Stream On event, the new HiFi service is a way to address the artists and fans who expressed that sound quality is important to them when listening to music. Evidently, it is “consistently one of the most requested new features by our users.” To...
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EVGA boldly entered a new product category and launched its first sound card at CES, the aptly named EVGA Nu Audio. The Nu Audio card represents the culmination of a few years of co-development efforts with the folks at U.K.-based Audio Note, makers of high-end audio reproduction equipment. Unlike many sounds cards that tweak and massage source material to produce various effects, EVGA’s goal with the NU Audio card was strictly on quality and playing back source material as close to how the original creators intended, with minimal filtering. To that end, the NU Audio card is packing nothing but top-notch components, right down to its Nichicon solid-state capacitors and audio-grade resistors....
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Most people thought that Essential was dead and had probably given up hope of getting the Audio Adapter HD dongle for headphones that the company had been promising for a long time. Things haven't exactly been smooth at Essential with the Essential Phone not selling well and the company announcing back in May that it was canceling its second-generation smartphone and considering selling itself. Last month Essential laid off 30% of its staff, and with those layoffs, any hope of the promised Audio Adapter HD launching dimmed. However, today we learn that Essential has launched the Audio Adapter HD as promised. The adapter launched yesterday and owners of Essential phones were hungry for the little...
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Chocolate and peanut butter, football and cheerleaders...light bulbs and wireless stereo speakers? Sony today is announcing the May 23 release in Japan of its LSPX-100E26J, a LED light bulb through which audio can be played. The company's press release pegs the new product as being a part of their "Life Space UX" product group, showcasing devices that "take advantage of space itself to create a new experience, aiming to do so by fusion of light and sound" (roughly translated from the Japanese). "How many _______ does it take to screw in a music-spewing light bulb?" In an installation example that is certain to get audiophile fingers a-tinglin' and toes a-tappin' (salivation...
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The audio industry has a tendency to make utterly ridiculous claims surrounding its products, as evidenced by the existence of $550 RCA cables and an $80 iPod cable guaranteed to leave your rig "exploding with sound." Despite this, the idea of using higher-quality sampling to produce better audio files seems like a no-brainer. If 16-bit/44KHz is good (that's standard CD quality), surely 24-bit / 192KHz is better, right? Morrow Audio's guarantees to make Monster Cable look cheap and sensible by comparison As it turns out, no. The full explanation of why is rather lengthy but surprisingly easy to understand for such a complex topic. The simplified explanation for why 24-bit / 192kHz is a bad idea...
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Placing a product in the "audiophile" category automatically opens it up for scrutiny of the highest order. The new Asus Xonar Essence STX "headphone amp card for audiophiles" is Asus' latest in a line of audio card offerings that pretty much cover the spectrum of PC audio applications. Asus now offers audio cards designed for gaming to Home Theater PC applications. We recently gave you a thorough look at the ASUS Xonar DX PCI Express 7.1 Audio card . And today we're looking at the latest iteration of the product, targeted at those of us with a more discerning ear. The Xonar Essence STX audio card boasts a host of features that are clearly aimed at end users...
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