Philips Quietly Killed Some Amazing Headphones
My favorite headphones for home music listening aren’t long for this world
This article was originally about one of my favorite headphones for home-based music listening — the next overdue installment in my “These Headphones are Too Good” series.
However, it all fell apart during the research phase. Before I write about a tech product, in addition to hours and hours of testing, I go and gather official marketing assets, including links to the official page for the product. It was during this process that I discovered a sad truth:
The Philips Fidelio X2/X2HR headphones have probably been discontinued.
If you’re not familiar with them, they’re a long-held standard bearer of the open-backed headphone world. They have a slightly ungainly design with stylings that would be just as home in 1990 as the modern era — but the sound performance is simply legendary for the price. Years ago, Harman’s own Dr. Sean Olive told me that Philips did similar audio research in-house as that which produced the Harman target curve, only they didn’t publish any papers about it. This research was then used to develop all of Philips’ higher-end headphones.
The resulting X2 was one of the most enjoyable-sounding headphones you could buy. It…
