Audio Archive

When you’ve decided to use over-ear headphones, protecting yourself from noise can be challenging. Because with passive noise protection, it’s necessary to build a physical barrier against your ear canal and ambient sound. Doing so requires a fairly tight seal between your head and the headphones, which means using clamping force. If you’re only going to be using your headphones for an hour or two, …

Picking earbuds is about understanding your priorities. Are you getting them in order to take calls all day? Are you trying to use them for athletic activities? Would you like one pair of earbuds that’s equally good for being active and for sitting at home? You might answer those questions differently at different times, and your preferences will ultimately help dictate what the right pair …

You’re out trying to shoot a video. Maybe it’s impromptu and you just happened to see something you want to record. Maybe it’s something you’ve planned, and you have got some time to determine where you want to shoot. In either case, you’re going to run into trouble if you expect the mic on your smartphone or camera to be sufficient on their own. Because …

Most people don’t know much about audio converters. So when people start looking for one, they often think that they are no more complicated than an ordinary signal converter. In other words, no different than changing one type of connection port into another type of connection port. But DACs are actually far more sophisticated than that. Because when you’re moving an audio signal, even minor …

Wireless sound can be good, or it can be great. What’s the difference? It depends on what you’re trying to listen to, and on where you’re trying to listen to it. For example, with people who are gravely concerned about noise isolation or calling features, you’ll want a different headset from people who only consider those features as a bit of an afterthought behind sound …