[astroid]

Some might say the HD800 ring radiator, others will sight the new orpho drivers.
I am not sure, noise cancelling or wireless come to mind or maybe how Sony managed to make a 70mm driver sound good in the MA900.
Anyway , whats your take?

 

[TMRaven]

I wanna say nothing.  Headphone industry hasn't been all that innovative.
 
The only thing cool has been the entrepreneurship of lots of small companies.

 

[ev13wt]

I'd say if at all, innovation happened in DSP / software / codecs.

 

[Redrider469]

I would say the newer ortho drivers or maybe the idea of decentralized drivers. Actually, I'm not sure if decentralized drivers are newer or if they were used a while back too

 
As for IEM's, balanced armatures are probably the best advancement but again, I'm not sure if they fit within the 10 year time span.

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,
 
Design.
 
Literally that.
 
Everything else is just a tweaked version of what we already had accomplished long ago. But ergonomics and design itself? Probably the biggest innovation.
 
Very best,

 

[vid]

In technical design, the biggest innovation may be the lack of innovation.

 

[soundeffect]

What about Bluetooth improvements? Just throwing it out there as there seem to be a slow movement in that direction.

 

[bizkid]

Not really an innovation but i greatly enjoy that more and more companies get serious about releasing higher quality headphones. The market was almost empty 10 years ago if you compare it to the endless number of headphones avaible today. Now we have so much choice, it's amazing.

 

[David Chavez]

"Innovation" I don't know. Uncompressed audio via wireless is very very impressive indeed. And I would agree on the ring radiator in hd 800. But my vote would have to go to the recent updates to DAC's. Getting a true balance standalone dac with two AKM4399 32-bit D/A converters is now affordable. The woo audio wa7 comes standard with a TI PCM5102A 32-bit DAC chip. This is very nice progress. (Not really a innovation) Also portable tube amps that sound wonderful! Whats not not love about that
 

 

[blueangel2323]

The Beats logo.

 

[astroid]

The HD700 , the first headphone designed to appeal to dogs?

 

[whirlwind]

Quote:

The Beats logo.

 

[cucera]

Isn't it interesting that some the most sought after Headphones HE90, Stax Omega, Sony R10 were developed more than 20 years ago. No Innovation here, it is in the Software like the Smyth Realiser (don't say its hardware the magic happens in a FPGA and that is Software)

 

[zkkzkk32312]

Use of Impulse Responses
and maybe the idea of planting headphones under your skin/inside your head,
regardless it being a good or bad idea....

 

[Theogenes]

Although I've never had the privilege of hearing one, the Smyth Realiser with its individualized accounting for HRTF jumps out in my mind as a significant achievement.