Then 2019 hit, and he saw the podcasting wave building. Smart money recognizes patterns early. "We started as 'So and Sign' but rebranded to Saspod to focus exclusively on podcasting," Nicolae told me. Translation: they went all-in when everyone else was still hedging their bets. The rebrand wasn't just marketing theater. It was strategic focus-the kind that separates winners from the "we do everything" crowd that does nothing particularly well.
They're incredibly detailed, particularly for earbuds, regardless of your favorite genre. Our reviewer Ryan Waniata "had a lovely time letting the buds loose across [his] whole music library" and had high praise for the excellent dynamics and precision. If you're an audio nerd who wants every note to stand out and shine, these are a great pick, particularly without the high price barrier.
Maybe I'm just too much of an audio snob to fully enjoy a portability-focused speaker, but sometimes bigger is better in the audio space, and with speakers, that's partly just a matter of physics. Bigger speakers move more air, which in turn equates to more bass, higher volume, and often, less distortion. Nevertheless, you're not going to catch me walking around with a car-sized boombox any time soon, which means some level of compromise in the audio department is always inevitable.
During a demo, Henry Phipps, a Suno product manager, pointed to a song we had the model generate that included a flute-like synth with what sounded like a ping-pong delay effect on it: "I've never heard that before in previous models... what that says to me is that the model understands that this is an isolated sound that's being affected and needs to be reproduced faithfully in different parts of the stereo field."
The reasons are, essentially, threefold. First, there's the pleasure of using something tangible: a nostalgia for devices with a single purpose, devoid of notifications and apps. More importantly, though, there's a desire to have a music collection again something led by the music-loving algorithm in your brain, rather than one outsourced to technology. It's their collection, rather than a playlist they've subscribed to, says Laidler, and they own the music and aren't simply leasing it from Spotify.
I like wireless earbuds because I love music. It's very straightforward; music exists, and I want to listen to it, and wireless earbuds are the thing that gets me to the thing I love. Problem solved. You can't see it, but I'm smugly dusting my hands right now like a mathematician at a chalkboard. There's a symbiosis between the buds and me. A simplicity. A supply and demand so fundamental that in the gadget world, it feels like a law of nature.
Sony has a winner here and has lived up to expectations. The Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones share similar features like comfort and sound but offer a slightly different headphone design (the WH-100XM4 is more adjustable) and are much cheaper.
The OnTrac headphones succeed Dyson's other, more unorthodox foray into the consumer audio industry. Last year, the company released a pair of headphones with an air-purifying mouthpiece attached.
