Our News

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21-11-21 Jürgen

Our Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/audioreviews finally cleared 9,800 members. It was established on 1 Jan 2020 and its growth has been stalling lately. Will we have 10,000 members by Christmas?

21-11-19 Jürgen

More drama ahead? I published me take on the $5 VE Monk Pro earbud. They finally got the impedance down from 64 ohm to 32 ohm to present a truly “portable” earbud. I think my writeup is reasonably entertaining.

21-11-19 Jürgen

We have been playing with Google Adsense in order to try out whether Google prefers their clients in their listings. We put the settings on “autopilot”…after 203 days, this angry guys showed up. Sign of things to come? We’ll monitor this.

21-11-17 Jürgen

This “drama” over this Facebook post generated quite some outrage. What some people did not understand was that I don’t see a relationship between the hype and the quality of this iem. If you read between the lines, you’ll see my subtle criticism of peer pressure and compulsive buying triggered by pied pipers. 8000 views: goal achieved :).

21-11-17 Jürgen

Durwood posts his review of the $1500 Questyle CMA Twelve DAC/amp combo…endgame for many.

21-11-15 Jürgen

Loomis publishes his Sennheiser CX 400BT review.

21-11-13 Jürgen

Baskingshark’s IKKO Zerda ITM1 review now published. I see some KZ reviews being presently worked on. In the immediate line-up are a Sennheiser TWS and a premium Questyle amp.

21-11-13 Kazi

Received the Fearless Barcelona recently for review. It is the cheapest Fearless IEM till now and the design belies the price tag. I love how they’ve designed the face-plate here.

Sadly, they sound horrible. Not recommended at all. Too much bass, highly recessed mids, zero treble extension. Get something else this holiday.

21-11-12 Alberto

Yesterday I received my new/old Cowon Plenue 2 and of course the very first impression is imprinted over my experience with QP1R. At first listen the P2 on its balanced output is quite nice, nicely extended and with a very good note weight. While less clean / revealing / detailed compared to the QP1R (whose single ended output is a quite good proof of why balanced is more a marketing name for decent quality output than anything else) on the other hand it offers a huge host of sound finetuning options, commencing from selectable reconstruction filters, to a very good “tweakable” graphical EQ module (not a true PEQ but close) and some further DSPs. Connectivity options are null / nil / zero – like QP1R. There’s not even BT – and that’s perfectly fine 🙂

21-11-12 Jürgen

Singles day is over…as the name implies, I didn’t buy a single thing. Our blog stats are surprising: 70% of our traffic stems from Google searches, and only 15% from Facebook. It is therefore not worth posting across FB groups…which is uncool anyway.

21-11-11 Jürgen

Today is 11/11 Asian Singles day. Not many exciting deals as far as I can see…but our blog experiences lots of views. In the meantime we published reviews of the FIIL CC2 and Oneodio Pro C reviews.

21-11-07 Jürgen

Burson Funk review out now. A fantastic headphone amp it is.

21-11-04 Jürgen

Working on the Burson Funk amp to hit the weekend deadline. Fantastic, powerful amp that works for headphones and speakers alike.

21-11-03 Jürgen

Published the Tin Hifi T2 EVO review. Kazi and I ordered a Final A3000 as found on our Wall of Excellence.

21-11-02 Jürgen

Re-dressed the blog’s right sidebar and added useful information. Meet your 8 authors, Wall of Excellence etc. Just look to the right.

21-11-01 Jürgen

Alberto’s iBasso IT04 review published. 283 iem reviews altogether now. Solved a caching problem, which affected our Google indexing. Thanks to the support of rankmath.com SEO plugin.

21-10-31 Jürgen

Finally got the Shanling UA1 review published. It is currently in Biodegraded’s hands for a 2nd review. Will have to finish the NiceHCK T2 EVO next week, and work on the Astell & Kern PEE51 dongle.

21-10-30 Alberto

Got my Hip Dac 2 review loaner unit in yesterday. First thing I noticed it came equipped with firmware 7.3 installed. The odd part is that on IFI’s website the 7.3 firmware is not listed under Hip Dac 2’s eligible downloads. Which means I could not recupe any “release info” about what’s different in 7.3 vs 7.2

While I was there, I also checked under Micro iDSD Signature’s section, and apparently firmware version 7.x has been removed from there too. Odd, at least. I put a question into IFI to get more info.

21-10-29 Jürgen

Published my Venture Electronics BIE Pro review on the blog. Submitted link to VE Clan Facebook group, where it got stuck in censorship, but was eventually posted after approval. That was only intermittent, I think I was tacitly expelled from that group after mentioning censorship. Be prepared that VE Clan Facebook group is manipulative as it presents cherry-picked information.

On another note, Loomis Johnson submitted his review of the Sennheiser CX-400BT True Wireless Earphones for publication.

21-10-28 Kazi

Received KZ ZEX. Their naming convention is making me go bad. Graphed it and labeled the graph wrong because these names all sound similar (ZAX/ZEX/ZSX). Either way, not too impressed with the sound. Kinda peaky in the mid-treble. Graphs show that as well.

21-10-27 Jürgen

Behind with some reviews, e.g. Unique Melody 3DT and Tin Hifi T2 Evo.

21-10-26 Jürgen

Blog received a few more tweaks, including a new site map.

21-10-25 Jürgen’s 10 Day Roundup

In the last 2 weeks, we published reviews of 2 totally underrated Final Audio headphones (Sonorous II+III) including some update earpads.

We identified some good TWS iems for the office in the Elevoc Clear.

We further think the Moondrop Kato is a winner (but need a second set for our European crew).

And we had a couple of second opinions of the GeekWold GK10, Tforce Yuan Li, SeeAudio Bravery, and Tanchjim Tanya.

We currently offer 281 earphone reviews.

21-10-25 Kazi

Received the iFi Hip DAC2 today, and the copper colorway will surely steal some glances. The sound isn’t changed much from the original Hip DAC (if at all) but it didn’t need to since the OG was one of the best DAC/Amps out there under $200. Full review in the works.

21-10-25 Jürgen

Worked on search engine optimization “SEO” all weekend after some trouble with Google. Also subscribed to webmaster tools of Bing and Yandex search engines. You can analyze the SEO of your own site here: https://rankmath.com/tools/seo-analyzer/

21-10-24 Kazi

Slow weekend, nice weather. Went out mostly to enjoy the fall colors. Also did some random photoshoot for the upcoming reviews. Also received the VE Monk SM recently. Not a fan. Shrill, sharp sound and technicalities are middling even for the $20 price bracket. At least it looks and feels nice in hand.

In other news, A&K released the SR25 mk. 2. Not a fan of the design at all. The tilted makes no usability sense. Also it’s basically the original SR25 with just a 4.4mm jack added. Meh.

21-10-23 Jürgen

Our blog has currently problems with Google indexing. I re-created the sitemaps. It would help if you linked to it from your site. Thanks.

21-10-23 Jürgen

The ongoing power crisis in China has led to increased operating costs as well as to price hikes of raw materials. Expect delays and price increases for your Christmas shopping.

Have not heard of 11/11 deals this year…strange.

21-10-22 Jürgen

Coming next on the blog (tonight my time) is Baskingshark’s review of the SeeAudio Bravery. We have a few more ready ones such as a tech article on “System on Chip” (SoC), that is dac and amp on the same chip. Another tech post will be an elaboration on the 1/8 rule on the example of the Apogee Groove.

Alberto will be offering reviews of the iBasso IT04, the Kinera Leyding earphone cable, and the Tanchjim Tanya in the very near future. These are ready. He is still working on a couple of Fearless models among others.

Also almost ready to go are reviews of the Shanling UA1 dongle, the VE Bonus Pro iem, and the VE Monk Go.

21-10-21 Biodegraded

Behind in evaluating various dongles sent by Jürgen for second opinions: Helm Bolt, Shanling UA 1, Earmen Sparrow, Tempotec Sonata BHD. So far, I’m surprised by the contrast between the Bolt and UA 1 (both use the same ESS DAC/Amp chip but yes, they sound a lot different) and by the bal vs SE contrast from the Sparrow. Comparisons will be made to the Audioquest DragonFly Black and ifi nano iDSD Black Label.

I’m also considering a winter project building this Pass Labs class A solid-state headphone amp to complement my tube hybrid and little USB- or battery-powered desktop/portable things. Much swearing will no doubt ensue. Right now though, have to clean the scratchies from the volume pot of an integrated amp that needs to be moved on.

2021-10-21 Kazi

Have had quite a hectic October, so couldn’t manage to publish anything. However, look forward to the “Review Extravaganza” over the coming two weeks or so. At least four articles are in the works and shall be published withing quick succession including:

• FIIL CC2 (a pretty good TWS)
• Moondrop Quarks
• Campfire Audio Holocene
• Campfire Audio Honeydew
• Final A4000
• Shanling Q1
• Cayin Fantasy

And just to close out, one of the photos I shot today (I think it came out pretty good). See you on the other side.

2021-10-21 Jürgen

Sitting currently on review units of Burson Funk amp and two Allo power supplies that may take some time. Almost ready is a review of the Unique Melody 3DT iem whereas the IKKO OH10 still needs some work. Overdue are reviews of several VE Electronics items as well as some ddHiFi accessories.

That famous Hidizs S9 Pro Copper edition dongle (limited to 500 copies) has been on its way from Calgary to Bologna for a good week now. Let’s see how fast Air Mail is.

Currently looking for a second Moondrop Kato review unit for our European chapter. After all, a single opinion is not sufficient for an item to qualify for our Wall of Excellence.

2021-10-21 Jürgen

This page was established to report our progress (but also some observations and opinions) within audioreviews.org. All our authors with WordPress accounts have access.

2021-10-20 Jürgen

Android Brick alas audioreviews.news is using our good name to attract traffic to his fake reviews. This may be legally correct but it is not ethical. He was shamed and left our Facebook group.

Beware of imitations!

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Just genuine analyses!