As the ink is drying on the Apple deal to buy Beats headphones, Bose is suing in Beats home base of Delaware for alleged infringement by Beats of their numerous noise cancelling patents.

 Bose have long researched this subject in particular for military personnel operating in high noise environments and in recent years these developments have surfaced on the consumer market in significantly effective noise cancelling Bose headphones and earphones.

launches a brand new website for mid 2014 with a fresh modern look, easier purchase for magazine issues and a massive expansion for our unique downloadable reviews and features. The valuable equipment sound quality ratings have been fully revised, are free to access and we have added a busy news and comment blog, the page you are reading now. With this comprehensive site rebuild we also offer numerous free archive articles and historic landmark reviews. 

To ensure the site is easy to navigate, the menu at the top is always visible. To assist you in always finding what you are looking for, links in the footer of every page take you directly to virtually every nook and cranny of the site. And you'll find that the hificritic.com search in the footer of every page is a fantastic tool for uncovering detailed information in a beautifully presented format from sources across the whole site. You must try it.

Our site will continue to grow over the coming months with music and book reviews and many more equipment features so please keep returning. The HIFICRITIC Forum* remains the place for the enthusiast discussions. But we also invite you to comment here on hificritic.com on our news blogs, share our pages and posts on your social media, follow us on Twitter and Facebook and subscribe to this blog's RSS feed.

Kinsky music control software has been around a few years now and  has just been updated and is now called Kazoo, with new features including faster searching, classical music browsing –  claimed to make it easier to browse and search by composer, and offering multiple room grouping for particular music selections. In order to get these functions the server software needs updating to Kazoo Server which replaces the existing Songbox system. Linn have a link to inform and support the changes.

With Neil Young in London last weekend playing Hyde Park,  Omniphone, the music download company based in West London’s Brook Green  announced that it would deliver higher resolution recordings to Neil’s Pono music player. 

Sean Olive has started a discussion: The Distortion of Sound on Linked In leading with a short  trailer for a 20 min video video.

…..more hands to the better sound quality campaign pump!

Hosted by Signals at Trinity Events Centre, Ipswich 29th 30th August 2014

Last year Signals celebrated their 20th anniversary with a  summer bash. The Signals hi-fi show seemed to go down very well with visitors and exhibitors alike.

Now Back again Friday 29th and Saturday 30th August. Same weekend and venue as last year, The Trinity Events Centre in the Suffolk Show-ground. Unlimited parking and a lovely peaceful rural setting.

The plan is for the 2014 Audio Show East to be bigger and better. We have more rooms (an adjoining building is being added to the mix), more brands will be there and we hope to make this the not-to-be-missed Hi Fi event in the region.    

New tech lamps are continuing to increase the RF, radio wave pollution of the environment. While the deleterious effect on living things is largely unproven, other more sensitive devices react adversely to this electromagnetic smog.

Devialet announced their SAM go faster software loudspeaker specific plug-in for their widening range of integrated amplifiers at the Munich High End show. We outlined the project in that show report. These downloadable ‘upgrades’ are loudspeaker specific so the thorny question is, who gets it first?