Hooray! We have a new installment of our new weekly feature “This Week in Headphoolia”, a lighthearted round-up of some of the headphone-related action of the last week. You can also check the First Edition. The format and style will be evolving as the weeks go back. What do you think about it? What topics would you want covered? Let us know in the comments here or there or on Twitter.

A brand new website feature has just gone live! A weekly round-up of potentially interesting things happening in the world of headphones, with an underlying (attempt of a) humor layer where relevant. It is “This Week in Headphoolia”. The segments are: News, Influential Reviews, fun Forum Threads, and YouTube videos. The format and segments will be tweaked in future editions.

What do you think about it? What topics would you want covered? Let us know in the comments here or there or on Twitter.

This version, Version I of the Headphone Tracker has been retired. But fear not, Version II has now been launched at our main website, which holds all the reference and longer posts. Version II launched in October 2017!

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My Christmas gift to you, dear readers, a twitter account as was promised. Well, it’s a couple of weeks late, but better late than never 🙂 Here it is, the twitter name matching the website name to make things simpler: @headphonesnao. The twitter will be even sillier in tone than the blog, so you have been warned 🙂

Meanwhile, the list of new headphones at CES 2017 continues to be updated. They are coming out faster than I can keep up with them at the moment, so I added a built-in “to-do list” 🙂

In the next couple of days I will begin diving into the published and leaked Black Friday ads looking for headphone-related offers. I will create a new perma-post that will keep getting updated as I discover more. Off the top of my head, there are going to be free after Plenti Rewards Philips earbuds at Rite Aid stores. These should be an easy and comfortable get, since most of the Black Friday brick and mortar crazy traffic is near malls and big superstores like Best Buy and Costco and Tarjay and such.

I have no advance notice of what will be offered, so it’s a YMMV as usual, but there might be some good deals offered on Tuesday July 12 in 2016, it is the annual Amazon Prime Day. I am planning to cover as much of the day as possible, but I can’t do it 24×7, I have to sleep and eat and things of that nature 🙂

The offers will only available to Prime members, but if you are not a Prime member and want to join the party, you can do so by starting a 30-Day Prime Free Trial. If you don’t like the membership, just cancel it before the 30 days are over and you won’t be charged. TIP: start the free trial early so you can get set-up and be ready to go on Prime Day!

This is a Request For Comments. What do you think of this experimental format for Useful Unboxing posts with pictures and text, but without audio and video? By “this”, I mean this headphone unboxing post for a *gasp* Skullcandy *double gasp* bluetooth headphone. Bluetooth has more parts (more buttons and ports and such) which makes it a versatile guinea pig for this experiment.

The idea behind the format is to give someone who hasn’t seen the headphone an overall idea of what to expect when they open the box, what’s included inside, and pictures of the relevant body parts (headband, slider, inputs, earcups, buttons, accessories, etc).

As far as the audio/sound part of reviews, I am still soul-searching on how to best do it. I really don’t want to be saying things like “creamy treble” or use inside baseball terms that mean different things to different people and such. More on that later, I may experiment with different formats before I settle on one.

CES 2016 brought some new headphones, or at least shone the spotlight on some of the headphones that got quietly mentioned during the holiday shopping season. So I started a new tracking post to round up some of the many new headphones that generated some buzz at CES 2016. More will be added, but if there are any models you want to see added specifically, please leave a comment!

We are working on a new feature in the Sidebar of this blog, a convenient list to eBay stores that sell headphones over there, for example, Headroom, Hifiman (Head Direct), Harman, etc. More are being added, and if you have any favorites, please let us know in the comments or using the contact form.

We have a new WordPress template installed, hopefully this one will prove more helpful than all the previous ones. It is a responsive theme based on the Genesis framework, so there is flexibility for future upgrades and such. More adjustments and refinements will be made and I will add some hopefully useful deal-related links in the Sidebar for quick reference. For feedback, ideas, corrections and the like, please leave a comment or use the contact form.

UPDATE (5/16/15): the “Read More” issue is now fixed. It only appears when there’s something more to show!

ORIGINAL: If this website looks different since the last time you visited, it is with good reason! I just installed a brand new WordPress theme, moving away from the 2015 WordPress default. This is not perfect, but I think it’s a functional improvement over the previous one. The sidebar is now on the right, it is still responsive, the font and font size is easily adjustable, and such. The only issue I haven’t been able to fix is the “Read More” that appears on every post even though most posts are short and are fully posted on the main page.

Tell us what you think in the comments or use the contact form.

This website is now using a new responsive WordPress theme, to make it easier to read on tablets and smartphones in addition to notebooks and desktop PCs. The options will be adjusted and optimized in the next few days. If you are reading on a smaller screen (eg tablet or smartphone) and want to see the menu and desktop-sidebar, press the Menu icon (three parallel lines) on the top corner of the page. It will expand in place, above the regular content.

I added a trio of menu options at the top of the blog (the black navigation bar) to make it easier to quickly filter through things. The options will increase over time. I can only post the categories that already exist, so the more deals get added, the more manufacturers will be added to that list.

The three new menu options are:

• HEADPHONE TYPES: Over and On Ear (one category), In-Ears, Earbuds, Bluetooth (and will add ANC and others later on), Amps and DACs (one category for now to keep things simple). Some deal-posts will be in multiple categories if they mention products that fall into multiple categories
• MANUFACTURERS: a lot more will be added as more deals get posted – I can only include the ones that have deals posted, if I put placeholders, you’ll be seeing empty pages, and that’s not fun
• AUDIOPHILE: it is tricky to define scope on this one. I’m doing it by ear (ha!) and by gut feeling for now. If you have strong opinions on what should be included/excluded please leave a comment or use the contact form

Welcome to our new Headphone Deals blog! This is operating as a sub-domain on our main headphones blog. Here we will feature deals on headphones and related accessories (amps, dacs, cases, etc).

What to Expect

This blog will cover new, refurbished, used, open-box, and everything in-between. New condition items are the default, so it won’t be mentioned in the title or have a WordPress Tag, but it will be mentioned in the blog-post text. Anything that is not new condition will mention its condition (used, refurbished, open-box, etc) in the blog-post title, and in the blog-post text, and it will also have an appropriate WordPress Tag indicating its status.

To prevent wasting space in the blog-post title, we will only mention “+ S&H” if shipping is mandatory for all shoppers. If something has free shipping, or free shipping under some conditions (eg orders over $35 or for Prime members), we won’t mention shipping in the blog-post title to keep things clean. Otherwise every post will have a long and winding title that will clutter things up (even more).

In order to keep things simple and easy, at the moment, for WordPress Tagging purposes, I decided not to divide headphones into open-back and closed-back and in-betweens or over-ear vs on-ear. I may do that in the future, but for now, I want to keep things as simple as possible. Likewise, I won’t create Tags for headphones with or without mic/remote or differentiate between 1-button and 3-button remotes. Again, for the sake of speed and simplicity. If any of these are important enough, please feel free to make a case for them.

I am still trying to figure out on where to draw the line on which headphones to tag as “audiophile”. There are never-ending forum discussions on what on “audiophile”, so it’s tricky business. I may have to write a 5000 word essay in order to explain where I draw the lines 😉

Let us know!

As with every online endeavor, there is always the risk of errors, mistakes, confusion, typos, and the like.

For questions, feedback, ideas, errors, suggestions, problems, and more, please use the online contact form or leave a comment below.