Headphone Commentary and Industry News
A review of the Wharfedale Vardus speakers, Onkyo SR-TX508 receiver, and Logitech Harmony One remote.
I know, I know, this is a headphone review site, not a speaker review site, what am I doing?! Well recently I purchased some the Wharfedale Vardus 5.1 speaker pack, along with an Onkyo TX-SR508 receiver, and there were very few reviews around, so I figured i’d share! Read on for my review.
A week or so ago we received an email from Fanny Wang asking if we’d like to review their headphones. After we finished sniggering about the name we said sure, we’d love to.
You may recognise the name from the recent news about Monster suing Fanny Wang over claims they’re a knock-off of the Monster Beats.
I have both headphones sitting side by side on my desk, and there is a heck of a resemblance. Did they copy them? I don’t know, and it’s not for me to decide. Both are good looking headphones though. The Beats are more comfortable as they’re an over the ear model, but Fanny Wang are pretty good for on-ear models, and they’re coming out with an over the ear noise cancelled product in a month or so.
First impressions are the drivers in the Fanny Wang headphones are quite poorly matched, with the left driver being significantly louder than the right. If i’d paid for these i’d return them for exchange or refund right away. I’ll try to do a fair review of the headphones given this obvious fault, but it will obviously lose points for such a basic problem.
I’m leaving the headphones to burn in for a day or so, i’ll post a full review once they’re ready.
We know the website is already pretty handy for anyone looking to buy decent headphones, but we know it’s not perfect. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll do a bit of work sprucing the place up a bit, and adding a few new features, but we’d like to know what YOU want changed or added.
Here’s the current list of things to do:
What else would you like? Leave your feedback in the comments and we’ll do our best 🙂
Late last year TFT Acoustics sent us three canal phones and one standard earphone for comparative review, and we’ve finally gotten around to posting our reviews. Overall, we’re impressed.
The 2100 2V1S canalphone is a stand out performer. It has a clear, well balanced sound, great bass that doesn’t overwhelm, and it’s just a pleasure to listen to. There’s also an “extra bass” version that gives you a little more bass at the expense of the mids and highs, though they’re still reasonably well balanced. The little brother 2101 2V1 model is a decent performer for a very decent price. The 1101 earphone model’s a bit crap, but my view is probably biased, i’ve never much liked that style of headphone. Overall the canalphones are very good value.
One problem is the sensitivity – they’re just too loud. Even on minimum volume on my iPod Touch I often wanted to turn the volume down. High sensitivity is common to thin film earphones, but these are ones are extra sensitive. On maximum volume these things would do permanent damage to your ears in no time flat – seconds, or minutes. If you get them, be careful. Hearing loss or tinnitus are serious problems, and neither can be cured – hearing problems are for life.
As the company is new availability is limited, but that should improve in the next few months.
On a lighter note I think they need to make better use of a spell checker – Acoustics has only one C . I suspect a name change will be forthcoming in the near future 😉