Other Audio Forums:
- Head-Fi: Excellent source of information on headphones and associated gadgetry (headphone amplifiers, portable/computer sources, etc.)
- Headwize: Headphone forums with a large DIY community. The Library section of the main site contains many informational articles and DIY project listings.
- The Audio Circles: Site mostly focusing on high end, two-channel audio.
- Home Theater Forum: You guessed it, home theater discussion (with an emphasis on audio components).
- AV Science Forums: Dedicated to all aspects of home theater, including audio.
- Audiogon: Great place to look for used hi-fi gear.
Review Sites:
- MANY Headphone reviews and comparisons from Head-Fi (user-contributed)
- HeadphoneReviews.org (user-contributed)
- Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity E-Zine (professional reviews)
- Audioholics E-Zine (professional reviews)
- Affordable $$ Audio E-Zine (amateur reviews)
Guides and FAQs:
- Headphones
- Headroom Build-a-Graph: Allows you to compare the performance of your choice of headphones head-to-head.
- A Quick Guide to Headphones (Headwize): Guide to the various types of headphones as well as what to look for when buying them.
- Headroom's Headphone Selection Guide: Tips on which models might be best for you. Warning: they are trying to sell you stuff!
Preventing Hearing Damage When Listening With Headphones (Headwize): How to not go deaf.- Taking Sound In Another Direction (Headwize): Article about binaural audio and why it's so cool.
- Speakers
- SoundStage! Speaker Measurement Archive: Listing of performance measurements for a wide variety of speakers.
- How to Audition Speakers: Tips on how to pick out the right set for you.
- Audioholics System Configuration & Setup section: Includes many useful articles about speaker/subwoofer positioning and calibration.
- Digital audio
- The Musician's Guide to Home Recording: Tons of information for those looking to record on their computers, from hardware to software to technique.
- Übernet: Site dedicated to the art of creating high-quality MP3s from your CD collection.
- Tips on configuring your system to use the Exact Audio Copy CD Ripper: The tool of choice for Überstandard ripping.
- Transferring LPs to CDR: Some Advice: Extensive guide on ripping your records to CDs.
- Rip Your Records: PC World article about how to rip your vinyl to a digital format, including a discussion of two different software packages for processing the rip.
- So you'd like to... Learn All About Phono Preamps: Amazon web guide about an important piece of hardware for use when digitizing your LPs.
- Homepage of the FLAC lossless audio codec: FLAC is an audio codec like MP3, but the fact that it does not throw away information when creating the files makes it ideal for backing up your CDs.
- Foobar2000: Extremely customizable audio player for Windows (somewhat of a local favorite).
- Foobar2000 Wiki: Contains several guides for configuring Foobar.
- MP3 versus CD: Writeup of a test trying to find an audible difference between high-quality MP3 files and the original CD.
- Do It Yourself (DIY)
- Headphone Tips and Tricks: Provided by Jan Meier, headamp designer
- Audiologica: Maintained by Tangent from Head-Fi/Headwize. Contains several of his well-known headphone amplifier designs and wonderful guides for building them.
- Tangent's Soldering Tutorial Movies
- Electronics for Beginners: Good reference for some of the principles behind amplifier design.
Misc.
- Subjective vs measurements in the perception of sound quality (Head-Fi thread): Very insightful thread about sound and perception with a bunch of great links.
- What Happened To Dynamic Range?: One of the many reasons modern audio recordings are so bad.
- There's Life above 20 KHz!: Article by CalTech reasearchers about the high end of the hearing spectrum. Good to reference when someone argues that people only hear from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
- Bose Acoustimass - Better Profits Through Marketing: What Bose doesn't want you to know (and one of the reasons you'll get laughed at for talking about Bose on audiophile sites).
- THX-Certification: What It Means and How to Use It (from Secrets of HT/Hi-Fi): Discusses exactly what the title says. See the Other Areas of Interest header for discussion of what the THX Computer certification means (in summary, not much).
Thanks for the extra links, SprySpectre! Based on the original audio links post by muisejt.
