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p3

This could be the last hi-fi speaker you'll buy

Nothing gets older faster than high-tech, but the Harbeth P3ESR sounds so good you may never want to replace it with another speaker. That's no hype; I know audiophiles still using similar speakers originally manufactured in the 1970s.

That's when American audiophiles first fell in love with small British monitor speakers engineered and designed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and manufactured by a number of companies, including KEF, Goodmans, Rogers, Spendor, and Harbeth. Though the speakers were all built around the same design, known as the LS3/5A, not all LS3/5As sounded exactly the same. Back … Read more

Does size matter? Over-the-ear vs. in-ear headphones

Since in-ear headphones sit in or near the ear canal, they don't interact with the pinna, the bends and curves of the outer ear that direct sound to the ear canal. The pinna also serves as an acoustic filter, enhancing the frequency range of human speech, and it also supplies directional cues, so we can localize where sound is coming from. That's how our ears and brains process sound in real life, but in-ear headphones don't interact with the pinna, so they can't sound as realistic as full-size headphones or speakers. In-ears can still sound great, … Read more

Three awesome-sounding on-ear headphones

I was shaken and stirred by the Bowers & Wilkins P5 on-ear headphones back in 2010. It set a new standard for sumptuous sound and build quality for very small, on-ear headphones. Designed with portable music players and phones in mind, the P5 was definitely a step up from most ear buds, and the sound was easy to listen to over the long haul. The P5 ($300) is still around, but B & W recently introduced a similar, but less expensive model, the P3 ($200).

When I unboxed the new one I decided to first judge it without directly comparing … Read more

B&W fills out its headphones line with sleek P3

Bowers & Wilkins' first two models of headphones -- the on-ear P5 and in-ear C5 -- have earned strong reviews from CNET. Now the company is extending its headphones line with a more affordable and more lightweight on-ear model, the P3, featuring a fold-up design and a hard-shell carrying case.… Read more

Wadia 151PowerDAC: A new state of the art for desktop amplifiers?

I heard about the Wadia 151PowerDAC from my friends at Magnepan, who make some of my favorite flat-panel speakers. They loved the way the 151 brought their fourteen-inch tall Mini Maggie speakers to life. That's great news, because when I auditioned the Minis at the factory last year (before they tried the 151) the speakers were hooked up to a massive Threshold stereo power amp. The Threshold/Maggie system was, by a large margin, the best-sounding desktop system I ever heard. Using a monster amp like that wasn't a practical solution for most buyers, but now with the … Read more

Microsoft: Google bypassed IE privacy settings too

In the wake of reports that Google had sidestepped privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser, Microsoft announced today it had discovered that the Web giant had done the same with Internet Explorer.

"When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?" IE executive Dean Hachamovitch wrote in a blog post this morning. "We've discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and … Read more

Fleet-footed P2P

Hermes P2P from Mp3Torpedo bills itself as "the fastest file-sharing program in the world," an assertion mirrored in its name, that of the wing-footed messenger of the Greek gods. Though some might argue with the claim, citing the many factors that determine file-sharing speed, there's no doubt it's one of the fastest free peer-to-peer (P2P) clients out there. It's an adware-free, Java-based, BitTorrent Pro-compatible application that works with a proprietary embedded tracker or an external tracker. You can add multitracker information to your torrents as well as add hashes for other networks such as Gnutella … Read more

Mozilla weighs privacy warnings for Web pages

Unless you speak lawyerese as a second language, a Web site's privacy policy can seem as incomprehensible as the loudspeakers on New York City subways.

The organization behind Firefox, the world's second most popular Web browser, has embarked on an ambitious project to change this. Instead of forcing people concerned about privacy to scroll through pages of "notwithstanding anything to the contrary," the Mozilla Foundation is designing a standard set of colored icons to reveal how data-protective--or how intrusive--Web sites are.

It does seem a bit odd that, in the era of the iPad and cars … Read more

Sony dropping 80GB PS3 in Japan?

The rumors of the impending arrival of a new PlayStation 3 are growing more fierce as new hints seem to turn up almost daily in the blogsphere. The latest discovery to pop up is what appears to be an internal document from 7-Eleven--which sells games in Japan--that suggests Sony may be about to discontinue the 80GB PS3 in its home country.

According to a report by a Japanese blog that Kotaku turned into English, 7-Eleven will no longer be taking "pre-orders" for black, white and silver 80GB PS3 after Sunday, August 9. (The document this information is based … Read more