I'm a lucky guy, I've reviewed most of the world's state-of-the-art headphones, and they're all big, head hugging over-the-ear designs from the likes of AKG, Audeze, Beyerdynamic, Grado, Hifiman, Sennheiser, and Stax. The Abyss AB-1266 is the biggest headphone I've ever worn, and the best-sounding headphone I've had a long-term relationship with.Then last year I reviewed a new, much smaller Abyss headphone, Diana, and while it was awfully good, it wasn't in the league of those aforementioned very best full-size headphones. Close, but no cigar. Abyss is an upstart headphone maker rapidly advancing the state of the art, so now there's a second Diana: the Diana Phi. It looks the same, but the Diana Phi's insides are different. It features a new version of the mighty AB-1266 Phi's driver, and the sound tuning has been refined. The Diana Phi's handmade, real leather ear pads are larger and a different shape than the original, still-in-production Diana's. To cut to the chase, the new … [Read more...] about Extreme high-end headphones are big and bulky, except this one
How to make money in Anthem: your guide to earning coins and shards
In Anthem, there are two kinds of currency available to you: coins and shards. The former is the currency that you earn in-game by completing missions, whereas the latter serves as the game’s version of microtransactions. Luckily, shards can’t be used for anything other than cosmetic purchases, so while spending your hard-earned real-world cash might get you a flashy suit quicker than grinding contracts for hours on end, it won’t afford you any extra power. Everything behind Anthem’s paywall is purely aesthetic. Some purchases in Anthem can be incredibly expensive, with certain suits costing upwards of 60,000 coins. To put this into perspective, you can expect to earn about 2,000 coins for completing a world event in Freeplay, and slightly more than that for completing missions as part of the game’s main campaign. So saving up for these upper echelon suits can prove to be quite an ordeal, especially given that you’ll want to be spending coins on … [Read more...] about How to make money in Anthem: your guide to earning coins and shards
What’s up with millennials’ vinyl attraction?
I love meeting young audiophiles who play LPs at home. They may stream music on their phone and in their cars, but at home they hunker down with their turntables and LP collections, and listen only to vinyl. For them music isn't just something they play as background, music is in the foreground. They may have just bought an inexpensive 'table or found one in the attic of their parents' home, and one thing led to another, and they started their audio journey. They went on to buy an amp and speakers or headphones. They all found that listening to LPs was a very different, more satisfying experience than streaming music. Over at the Turntable Lab shop in New York's East Village, most customers are in their 20s, with a smattering of folks in their 30s and 40s. The bulk of the turntable sales are walk-ins, and customers who already have one are buying phono cartridges.Justin Yu is one of those young audiophiles who's always on the prowl for more LPs. We knew each other from … [Read more...] about What’s up with millennials’ vinyl attraction?
Was this photo snapped on the rumored Nokia 9?
Press events for MWC 2019 start tomorrow, and one of the shows in the schedule is being hosted by Nokia: perhaps to unveil the Nokia 9. Now we've got what could be the first Nokia 9 snap to be made publicly available.The image was snapped and posted to Instagram by photographer Konsta Punkka, with a caption referencing the Nokia event on February 24. The post is also labeled as a paid partnership with Nokia Mobile.That Instagram post was then shared on Twitter by HMD Global's Chief Product Officer Juho Sarvikas, who said he was "super excited" to have Konsta appearing on stage at the launch.Another new phone we're expecting is the Sony Xperia XZ4The Xbox Two reveal is being tipped for 2020Huawei should have something to show off at MWC 2019You don't have to be a professional detective to put two and two together and make an informed guess that this really is a Nokia 9 image – and quite an impressive one at that, with plenty of detail in the darker and lighter areas.Five-lens … [Read more...] about Was this photo snapped on the rumored Nokia 9?
The OnePlus 7 5G is launching on EE in the UK soon, but skipping the US altogether
The OnePlus 7 5G has an official release date window and carrier, at least in the UK, but you shouldn't expect anything more than the 4G LTE version in the US.The next OnePlus phone – and the first to support 5G – will launch in the second half of 2019 in the UK, exclusively through carrier EE, according to USA Today.We'll even see a OnePlus 7 5G prototype teased at MWC 2019 on Monday, but for US consumers, it'll be a literal tease of what's to come, mostly likely in the OnePlus 7T.The OnePlus 7 timing makes sense – Q2 2019 is between April 1 and the June 30. The OnePlus 6 was announced on May 16 last year and released on May 22.OnePlus 7 specs confirmedOnePlus 7, the popular placeholder name following the OnePlus 6T in November, won't deviate from the company's cheaper price for flagship-level specs philosophy.It'll have the Snapdragon 855 chipset and use Qualcomm's 5G-capable X50 modem. This is the chipset that's inside the Samsung Galaxy S10, S10 Plus and S10E … [Read more...] about The OnePlus 7 5G is launching on EE in the UK soon, but skipping the US altogether