InnerFidelity

Grover Neville is a contributing writer for InnerFidelity. In this episode we sit down with the 24-year old headphone reviewer to chat about what his process is like along with his take on living and engaging with personal audio in a forum-based ecosystem. His extensive history with music is finely compressed over his early years with both performance and production experience leading into advanced collegiate training. More recently, Grover has turned his perceptive gaze to the consumption side of audiophilia. You can follow his unique perspective into the hobby directly on Innerfidelity.com through show coverage, product evaluations and music reviews.

Grado Labs is one of the original hi-fi headphone makers. Based in New York, the longtime family company has been manufacturing phono cartridges and headphones dating all the way back to the 1950s. At a recent audio show in Los Angeles, a new generation of the Grado company consisting of Johnathan and Matthew joined their father and current CEO John Grado to discuss what the company has been up to the past few years and what lies ahead for fans of the brand in the future.

It didn’t take long for Noble Audio to find their place in the audio world. Over a short span of time, the company quickly grew its wares to include some of the most sought after and beautiful pieces of personal audio jewelry. Known for both custom earphones constructed of specialized materials and profound sounding universal fit IEMs, both John “The Wizard” Moulton and his brother Jim now direct the company across the globe. Jim offers up a little bit of his time to discuss the finer things in personal audio, where the niche company started from and what lies ahead for the team in the future.

Tube designs have always been a staple of Manley Labs. Now with the launch of a new hifi-focused line of products, the first unit off the bench for the pro-side leaning company is the Absolute headphone amplifier, which compiles much of the analog know-how from the US-based company’s years of experience. In this interview with EveAnna Manley and designer Zia Faruqi we cover off all the bases in terms of what to look for in a well-built tube amplifier in the personal audio space.

Dan Wiggins of Periodic Audio has a deep pool of manufacturing knowledge to pull from. His latest company may specialize in single dynamic driver IEMs, but he has put his time in designing transducers behind the scenes – for companies big and small across the hobby. In this interview, Wiggins gives us his take on material use, the ins and outs of manufacturing abroad, and listening for yourself.