heads

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2010, held last weekend at the Denver Marriott Tech Center Hotel, showcased the best and brightest high-end audio designs.

Hundreds of high-end manufacturers from North America, Europe, and Asia, from tiny one-person operations all the way up to industry giants like JBL were on hand. RMAF has a very different vibe than the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas every January--RMAF is a more grassroots affair.

Vandersteen Audio's incredible Model 7 ($45,000 per pair) features balsa wood/carbon-fiber woofer, midrange, and tweeter drivers individually hand-crafted by Richard Vandersteen himself. Each driver can take up to one day to build. The sound is more believably natural and realistic than that of any other speaker at the show. Stereo imaging was full-bodied and dimensionally convincing in ways no other speaker can match. Vandersteen speaker prices start under $1,000, and they're all made in Hanford, CA.

Vandersteen's sound just nudged past Kaiser Acoustics' stunning Kawero speakers. These slender towers are priced about the same as the Model 7, but were even more transparent and pure sounding. The made in Germany speaker's transient speed and dynamic punch were spectacular. The design is said to produce excellent sound quality in real rooms, without any acoustic treatment. Kaiser invested seven years into research and development of the Kawero speakers.

Entry-level audiophile gear from Napa Acoustic made an immediate strong impression. Their NA-208S ($199 a pair) speakers, mated with their NA-208A ($399) tube integrated, 25-watt amplifier sounded rich, with lots of detail. Napa's build quality is the best I've seen for budget-priced gear.

The best headphone sound came from the Audeze LCD-2 ($945). These full-size headphones had a huge, open sound, with effortless clarity. Audeze has a hit on its hands, and its customer waiting list is currently running to four weeks! I hope to get a pair for review soon. The LCD-2 was plugged into Red Wine's Isabellina HPA headphone amplifier, but the headphone can also work with iPods.

I had a great chat with headphone guru and Head-Fi founder Jude Mansilla about the future of high-end audio. Our conclusion: today's younger headphone audiophiles will be tomorrow's high-end audiophiles. That is, headphones are a great way to discover what high-end sound is all about, for a fraction of what a speaker-based high-end system would cost. Mansilla promised to introduce me to a bunch of young Head-Fi-ers, who are just starting to get into speakers. The next-generation audiophiles are an intensely passionate group of people! I'll report back soon about what they have to say. … Read more

We've seen head-up displays (HUDs) before in production vehicles like the Chevrolet Corvette and the BMW 5-Series. However, these displays are often small, monochromatic, and use technology that's nearly a decade old. Pioneer aims to change this with a new laser-based prototype HUD, unveiled and demonstrated at Ceatec 2010 in Japan.

Pioneer's HUD uses lasers to project full-color animated maps and images onto a transparent panel, but Pioneer predicts that one day the system could be used to throw maps and turn-by-turn directions onto your vehicle's windshield. The prototype system connects to an Android OS smartphone … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Think about how fragile an egg is. It seems as if you barely touch one, it cracks open. Now imagine putting something weighing 75 pounds on top of some eggshells. You can just see the fragments flying everywhere, right?

Not in Kari Byron's world.

For Byron, a longtime co-host of the mega-hit Discovery Channel show "MythBusters," demonstrating the amazing strength of eggshells is just one favorite moment of "Head Rush," the new show she's hosting that's aimed at getting middle school kids hooked on science.

Premiering on Monday, the commercial-free "Head … Read more

I've known my share of audiophiles who own lots of speakers, amplifiers, etc., but Wayne McManus has 40 high-end headphones. He's slowed adding to the collection, and now mostly concentrates on out-of-production classics--Sennheiser HE90 electrostatics, Sony MDR R-10, Sony Qualia 010, AKG-K1000, Audio Technica L3000, Grado HP-2--because each one has its own distinctive character and feel. McManus thinks speaker-only audiophiles are missing that aspect of the hobby; they're stuck with one sound. For the price of a pair of high-end speakers you can buy a healthy selection of the world's very best headphones. McManus has invested around $50,000 to date.

McManus bought a motor home three years ago, and now spends every April through August exploring the U.S. and Canada. He's semiretired and takes a small selection of headphones with him on the road.

At home he uses a very impressive hi-fi outfitted with MBL 101E speakers, MBL electronics, and a VPI turntable, but headphones have superior detailing. He put it this way: "You may have heard the same album a hundred times over speakers, but you pick up on new stuff over headphones, and when you move up to IEMs [in-ear monitor headphones] you hear even more of that microscopic effect. But you lose the sense of being at a live concert."

So I was hardly surprised to hear that McManus owns a Smyth Realiser A8 processor that makes headphones sound like speakers. He thinks the Realiser A8 makes it almost impossible to distinguish between the sound coming from headphones and speakers. It improves the stereo localization of all of his headphones.… Read more

If there's anything worse than imagining that your ornery homeroom teacher has come back to haunt you, it's imagining that she's come back as a robotic head. One that can never die.

Bina48 is an interactive robotic head whose appearance and personality are based on those of a real woman, Bina Rothblatt (I'm not implying Rothblatt is ornery or a teacher, but her uncanny doppelganger reminds me of a severe former nun I had in grade school).

The bot was wrought by android wizard David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, known for its Einstein android. It contains 30 servomotors covered by rubber skin.

Bina48 can link to the Internet to retrieve information and chat with users by referencing dozens of hours of interviews with the human Bina. In a crude fashion, it enshrines her personality and allows her to exist beyond her years in robot form. The bot even admits to wanting to be more like the real Bina.

As seen in The New York Times interview in the video below, however, it has underwhelming conversational abilities, typical of android heads and chatbots. Its movements can be jerky, even zombielike, evoking the dreaded Uncanny Valley, a design issue that can make humanoid robots and characters repugnant.

Bina48's backstory, though, is interesting. According to the Times' Amy Harmon, Hanson created the $125,000 mecha-bust of Rothblatt for her spouse, millionaire entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt in an attempt to give Bina some degree of immortality. … Read more

Editors' take: There are few things better than a good game of no-limit Texas Hold'em. One of them is a free game of no-limit Texas Hold'em. Heads Up: Hold'em HD for the iPad is a surprisingly polished title that offers 1-versus-1 competition (more would be nice, obviously, but beggars can't be choosers) against the CPU or a friend--someone you can hand your iPad to when it's his turn, or someone who has his own iPad or iPod. (Heads Up supports wireless play via Bluetooth.)

It's always advisable to use a tripod when shooting landscapes because it helps keep the horizon level. However, if you're snapping on an uneven surface, you'll have to level the tripod head with the equipped bubble level, which can be quite a tedious task, especially when handling a bulky camera.

This is where the Acadalus CPS-H1 self-leveling camera head comes in handy.

The Acadalus mount has a built-in digital inclinometer, which detects how steep the camera's tilt is. At the press of a press of a button, the stepper motor (used in flight simulators) will automatically … Read more

I love checking out car restorations and seeing what some people are doing to their old-school rides. Well it doesn't get much more old school than this: a 1937 BMW 328 Roadster, and in Wednesday's blog post we got to see and hear about the work that was being done by Black Horse Garage to improve the body shell. In today's clip we join up with the Black Horse gang to see what work they are doing to the engine, and it should be quite interesting.

This video begins with a Black Horse Garage tech checking out … Read more

Tuesday's video blog was all about wiring and hooking up an aftermarket head unit into your car stereo, but let's suppose you want to create a big, bumpin' system. In that case, you want to get yourself an amp. And if you want to see how to hook up an amp to your car stereo, you've come to the right place, as this Web clip is a practical demonstration on how to make it happen.

This instructional clip goes over some of the tools and materials you'll need to wire and install the amp, how to … Read more