Holidays Guide From Jaben

The month of December is the month of giving especially for those who celebrates Christmas. With Christmas around the corner, I believe most of you already have your shopping list ready. So have you been nice this year or are you going to be in Santa’s naughty list? If you can’t get a gifts from Santa this year, maybe you can ask your closest friend, parents or anyone close to you to give some headphones. Don’t forget to put in “Headphones” in their shopping list. What is more pleasing than a headphone for an audiophile or music lovers?

New Shure Open Back Headphone

It seems like even until today, their new open back headphone is still in Coming Soon status. Most probably their date of December 6^th as stated in the Shure Japan twitter is more of a launch date or introductory date instead of releasing them into the markets. At least their information about the new open headphone already has been released.

What is the latest news from Shure?

If you think the Shure SE535 Special Edition that just launched not too long ago is the latest news from Shure then you are very outdated.

JDS Labs C421 Amplifier Released.

Last week, John Seaber has quietly release the C421 headphone amplifier. This is one of the most anticipated amp from the JDS Labs CmoyBB users. Pricing at $169 for AD8620 and $165 for AD8066, they are far lower than their original pricing of $175. But of course this is still on a pre order stage so the pricing might change again. Any one that are in need of an amp please do so quickly as this sells like hot cakes. 10% of the 95 amps already have been sold out in just first 5 hours of released. Why is this interesting? Well this a successor to the famous JDS Labs CmoyBB which many regards as the best budget amp. Pricing at around $60, it is definitely one of the best amp money can buy. I can assure you this because I own the JDS Labs Cmoy. If this is truly better than the Cmoy then this will truly be a great buy. As you can see that they are two variants available with only the differences in the opamp in which one uses AD8620 and one uses AD8066. AD8066 has been one of the hottest opamp discussed in my local community and they really prefer it a lot when powering their JDS Labs CmoyBB. So don't take that a slightly cheaper price means they are more inferior. And here is the take that John have to say. "Two options are available for the primary stage opamp: AD8620 or AD8066. Our #1 choice for c421 is the AD8620, which gives smooth, refined output and excellent imaging. A/B tests deemed the AD8620 more favorable than the OPA2227 and AD8397! The AD8066 is slightly less transparent, with similar highs but greater emphasis on bass. AD8066 is better suited to driving especially high impedance headphones (300+ ohms)."

Link to preorder page

Pics after the jump.

Unique Design From Take T~Japanese Madness

As usual just like most Japanese stuffs, they are always unique and some just have looks more than having a  realistic function. For decades the Japanese has always been the leading innovator in making so many unique things that in which some of them have become a reality and make its way into our daily life. This type of innovation really brings a lot of benefit to us. And now we have here another innovation from the country of the rising sun, Japan. If anyone of you that have been a frequent visitor of Head-Fi you should have notice that they used to have a TakeT BPP advertisement that looks like some kind of a button battery on the right hand corner of the website. And I think most of us never even bother to click it. And now, Head-Ti TV has brought us the thing and explaining what it is all about. TakeT BPP is a portable super-tweeter for headphone listening that exceed human hearing or the ultra sonic frequency. The idea and the function is well explained in the video. The TakeT BPP is priced at JPY 3700 or estimated around USD 48+-. It's not too expensive and you can give it a try if you find the effect of the face test is very pronounce to you as explained in the videos. Another innovation from TakeT is the H2+ headphone and TR2 transformer box. The biggest problem with this headphone is that it requires you to power it from a loud speaker output and this can be an inconvenience for the most of us because of the sheer size and worst of all for us head-fier. Costing at $3300 for both H2+ and TR2, they better be a good sound system. It's basically more expensive than HD800 plus a JH16PRO together which can be said to be one of the best within it's category. So give your view on the unique TakeT products. For more information and discussion you can go to Head-Fi at here and TakeT website at TakeT BPP and TakeT H2+