I have been invited to do some scribbling on the subject of headphones and microphones. It happens that headphones were responsible for some of my key formative experiences as a rookie writer in the wonderful world of audio and high fidelity. The first was with an early open-back model, the brightly presented HD 414, which came like a bolt from the blue to what at the time was moribund market dominated by the dull sounding heavyweight sealed back designs from US based manufacturers like, well you know who. Read the rest of this entry »

 
At the end of 2006 I went over to Neumann, Berlin to be shown the new range of digital microphones and initially was thinking – digital microphones, great, but…
 
However, I was forgetting about all the headroom that you have to allow for with analogue microphones. Headroom in the microphone pre-amplifier (and the additional noise in the analogue circuit) and the headroom you have to allow in the D/A converter. These two added together mean there is about a 25dB reduction in the s/n ratio – so, a 130dB dynamic range gets reduced, in effect, to only 105dB. That was point #1 that started me sitting up and listening.
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Digital Audio Formats - Lossless Audio

For those of you who appreciate audio at a quality that comes close to matching the original performance, you would be forgiven for dismissing the storing and playback of music on a computer, media hard drive or portable music device.

So what might you be overlooking?

Well, there are two main types of digital audio formats, Lossy and Lossless. Although we are interested in the latter, we will take a brief look at the Lossy format history.

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Many people are concerned by the apparent uncertainty regarding the future availability of UHF frequencies for radio microphones. The first issue is the change over from Analogue TV broadcasting to Digital Terrestrial Television often referred to as DSO (Digital Switch Over). Added to this there are now pressures from European Mobile Telephone Network operators. Not all UHF radio microphone users will be affected by these changes, though many will.
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You have invested time and money into your headphones and with the correct maintenance at home you will increase their lifespan without having to go through the expense of returning them to the manufacturer or servicing agent for repair.
 
Here are eight simple steps we would recommend for home maintenance: Read the rest of this entry »