By Lewis Dalven. Lewis is one of our audio specialists who has been in the business for over 46 years and knows a thing or two!

Audio systems are electrical and draw their power from the outlets in your home.  Even in Boston, MA homes with dedicated direct service lines and hospital-grade outlets, noise contamination from motorized appliances and computer equipment is unavoidable.  Removing this contamination while maintaining the current drawing capacity of your power conditioning system is the purpose of specialty audiophile power products.  One may well wonder how, when the power wiring in your home almost certainly uses commodity 14/3 "Romex" wiring, can the last 6 feet make a difference?  Turn the question around instead and ask, "How can you make your system access power that is as noise-free and unimpeded as possible?"

Investing in a fine music or home theater system is no small outlay, and no one wants to see cherished components go up in smoke as a result of a power surge.  This concern has stimulated the growth of a whole product category of "surge suppressors".  Unfortunately, many of these products have the unintended effect of choking the ability of your components to re-create the dynamics of live music found in your recordings. 

When properly calibrated and dialed in, many high quality AV receiver brands can deliver the envelopment and excitement of home theater surround sound.  But none of them make us want to listen to music the way a great stereo system can.  2-channel audio represents the more exacting challenge for music listening...it's up to the 2 speakers to create the soundstage image, with all the detail and dynamics present in the recording, without the potentially distracting influence of additional speakers' sound coming from multiple locations.

There are many reasons to listen to music on headphones.  You can hear details in a recording that might go unnoticed through conventional speakers.  There is an intimacy of listening to music without the effects of “the room.”  And, most of the time, you don’t get “turn that music down” from a less enthusiastic family member!

From earbuds to state-of-the-art high-end over-ear “cans,” there is a breadth and variety of high performance headphones on the market today.  We can break down the types in several ways.  There is the physical “form factor,” which can be categorized as in-ear, on-ear, or over-ear.  Comfort is a factor, as is the appearance of the ‘phones if wearing in public is a consideration.