I answer the two biggest questions I keep getting about the Steven Slate Immersion One: can you use the VSX system for immersive audio, and should you upgrade from the original VSX? My verdict might surprise you — better doesn't always mean right for you.

I take a first look at the Areal SR1 — a groundbreaking set of immersive headphones from Belgium that uses multiple physical drivers per ear cup to reproduce spatial audio through your own ear geometry, bypassing software-based HRTF simulation entirely. In this video I walk through the hardware, the audio interface, the setup process, and give my honest verdict on whether the SR1 lives up to its fascinating concept.

I review Beyerdynamic's free Headphone Lab plugin, which offers headphone correction and virtual studio room simulation for Beyerdynamic headphones. While it's simple to use and costs nothing, it has limitations including stereo-only support and a missing blend option for the correction curve.

In this video, I review the IK Multimedia ARC On-Ear, a portable studio simulation device that promises to solve my biggest frustration with the Qudelix 5K—the difficulty of switching between different headphones. I'll show you how this compact, battery-powered device works, demonstrate its on-device headphone correction and studio simulation features, and share whether it lives up to my hopes for a more user-friendly alternative.

In this detailed comparison of the Sony MDR-MV1 headphones against the Ollo Audio S5X and Sennheiser HD490 Pro, I discover that the concept of "binaural-optimized headphones" might be oversold, as all three high-end headphones perform nearly identically for binaural audio, suggesting that buyers should focus more on personal comfort and sonic preferences rather than specific binaural capabilities.