At AXPONA 2026, the EarGear section was filled with the usual heavyweight brands, but a smaller name managed to stand out. Audma may be a new company on paper, founded in 2024, but its story reaches back to 1978 when Cesare Mattoli began chasing a stubborn idea: getting headphones to sound more like speakers in a room.

For decades, that goal remained out of reach. Mattoli built and rebuilt designs that never quite delivered, held back more by the limits of available technology than a lack of vision. That changed in 2022 with the arrival of ELISA, the Electronic Loudspeaker Imaging Simulating Amplifier, which finally brought his concept into focus. The company later rebranded as Audma in 2024, keeping ELISA as the core technology behind its products. Since then, Audma has introduced two amplifiers, the Maestro HPA1 desktop model and the Brioso PHPA1 portable, both demonstrated at AXPONA as a different way to tackle soundstage without changing your headphones, just the signal path.

While most headphone manufacturers try to squeeze more space out of their designs by tweaking cup geometry, airflow, and damping materials, Audma takes a different route. Its approach centers on delay line processing at the amplification stage, shaping how the signal reaches each ear rather than altering the headphone itself. The idea is straightforward: keep your existing headphones and source, insert one of Audma’s amplifiers into the chain, and let the processing do the heavy lifting in creating a more speaker like presentation.

How Audma ELISA Reworks Spatial Cues Inside Your Headphones

The ELISA circuitry uses delay line processing to create an image that more closely approximates what a listener hears with speakers or live music. One of the core issues it addresses is that headphones separate channels too well. In real world listening, the brain determines direction and distance based on the time delay between when a sound reaches each ear and the reduction in level at the farther ear.

With headphones, that mechanism is largely lost because each channel is delivered almost entirely to one ear. Some amplifiers and digital audio players attempt to compensate with crossfeed. Crossfeed mixes a portion of each channel into the other with reduced level and a slight delay so that both ears receive both signals, more like real listening conditions. Different implementations vary the amount of delay and level, which is why reactions to crossfeed tend to be mixed.

Audma builds on that same principle but with a more advanced approach. ELISA allows adjustment of both delay and perceived direction rather than just blending the channels. On both the desktop and portable amplifiers, listeners can control the apparent distance and angle of the sound, effectively expanding or narrowing the stage and shifting their position relative to it. In practice, that means you can move closer to the performance or further back by making a few adjustments, rather than changing headphones.

ELISA Enabled Products

The Maestro was Audma’s original release and is designed to function as both a headphone amplifier and a preamp. Connectivity is extensive, with XLR, RCA, coaxial, optical, and USB inputs, along with both RCA and XLR outputs. The chassis follows a fairly standard full size footprint at 16 x 4.5 x 16 inches (W x H x D) and is available in either brushed metal or black, with weight ranging from roughly 20 to 25 pounds depending on configuration.

On the digital side, the Maestro incorporates an AKM 4499REQ DAC capable of up to 768 kHz/32-bit PCM and DSD256, making it a serious standalone DAC as well. As a headphone amplifier, it offers an output impedance of 6 ohms and six selectable gain levels at 0, +6, +12, +18, +24, and +30 dB, allowing it to accommodate a wide range of headphones. Output power is rated at 4 watts into 32 ohms and 8 watts into 300 ohms, and it had no issue driving 600 ohm headphones during the demo, including a borrowed Beyerdynamic headphones.

Along with the standard controls and ELISA stage and angle adjustments, the Maestro also includes phase control, giving the listener another layer of tuning to better match personal preference and system synergy.

The portable Brioso PHPA1 offers both headphone amplifier and DAC functionality but drops the preamp role in favor of battery operation. Its size and shape are roughly comparable to a Samsung Galaxy S25+, measuring about 3 inches wide, three quarters of an inch thick, and just under 6 inches tall. Weight comes in at around half a pound, making it easy enough to carry on a daily basis.

Internally, it uses the AKM 4499EXEQ DAC paired with the 4191EQ modulator, supporting up to 768 kHz PCM and DSD256. For those who prefer an external DAC, both 3.5 mm and 4.4 mm analog inputs are included. The amplifier section provides four gain settings at 0, +8, +16, and +24 dB, with output power rated at 4 watts into 32 ohms and 5.4 watts into 150 ohms, which is more than enough for the vast majority of headphones.

Battery life is rated at up to 5 hours per charge, depending on listening levels, DAC usage, and headphone load.

Both Audma amplifiers are priced at approximately $5000 USD and are available directly from Audma or through select distribution partners.

The Bottom Line

Audma is chasing something most headphone brands only nibble at from the edges. By moving spatial processing into the amplification stage, ELISA offers a level of control over stage width, depth, and positioning that goes well beyond typical crossfeed. It’s clever, and in the right setup, it works.

The problem is the price of entry. At around $5000, you’re being asked to rethink your entire signal chain for an effect that some headphones, like the Grell OAE2, already attempt to deliver for well under $500. No, they don’t offer the same level of adjustability or precision, but the gap in cost is hard to ignore.

If ELISA delivers on its promise in a controlled environment, Audma might be onto something genuinely different. But at this level, different isn’t enough. It has to be indispensable.

For more information: audma.it

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We’ll start things off this week with a story that’s developing more than 25 billion kilometers from Earth — on Friday, NASA announced that the command had been sent to shut down Voyager 1’s Low-energy Charged Particles (LECP) instrument. As the power produced by the spacecraft’s aging radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) continues to dwindle, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been systematically turning off various systems to extend the mission for as long as possible. It’s believed that deactivating LECP should buy them another year, during which engineers hope to implement a more ambitious power-saving routine. If this sounds a bit familiar, you’re probably thinking of Voyager 2. The plug was pulled on its LECP instrument back in March of 2025.

The JPL engineers hope that their new plan may allow them to reactivate previously disabled systems on the twin space probes, but even if everything goes according to plan, there’s no fighting the inevitable. At some point, there simply won’t be enough juice in the RTGs to keep the lights on. Although it’s going to be a sad day when we have to bring you that news, surviving a half-century in space is one hell of a run.

Speaking of ending a run, just a week after Amazon announced that pre-2012 Kindles would no longer be supported, the company is letting users know that the Kindle software for PCs will be discontinued in June. In its current form, at least. As Good e-Reader reports, Amazon is developing a new client for users who want to access the Kindle ecosystem from their computers, but it will only run on Windows 11. Since older software could be used to strip DRM from purchased ebooks, it seems likely this is another attempt to lock the platform down.

We’re not fans of arbitrary limits being placed on ebooks and the devices that read them, but on the other hand, there are definitely systems out there that could stand to be tightened up a bit. For example, research out of Quarkslab has shown that the electronic control unit (ECU) from a wrecked vehicle can reveal a surprising amount of information.

After picking up a used ECU, they were able to dump its NAND flash chip and decode the log files it contained. It turns out the car had GPS logs going back to the day it rolled off the assembly line, and the researchers were able to reconstruct every trip it ever made.

By cross-referencing the last recorded coordinates with social media posts, they were even able to find pictures of the crash that took the vehicle out of commission. It’s bad enough that personal information can be scraped off of secondhand hard drives; now we’ve got to worry about what happens to our cars after they get hauled off to the junkyard.

If these are the sort of stories that keep you on two wheels rather than four, you may be interested in the latest innovation from Škoda Auto. In an effort to reduce collisions with pedestrians, they’ve developed a bike bell that penetrates active noise cancellation (ANC) systems. The logic goes like this: if someone is walking around with headphones that feature ANC, they might not hear the bell of an approaching bike. So they teamed up with researchers from the University of Salford to essentially find the weaknesses in existing ANC systems.

As you might have guessed, irregular noises are harder to block out than constant tones. Researchers uncovered a gap between 750 and 780 Hz where sounds could sneak through. The mechanical bell uses both principles to defeat ANC, and in testing, it was shown to provide headphone-wearing pedestrians  more time to react to an approaching bicycle.

Finally, we’ll bring this week’s post full circle by starting and ending on a space story: earlier this week, PBS released the hour-long documentary Artemis II: Return to the Moon on YouTube. Watching PBS programming on YouTube might seem a bit odd, but that’s the world we live in these days. At any rate, the video is a fascinating look into what went into the recently concluded Moon mission and has us even more excited for Artemis III and beyond.

See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear about it.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is pretty tricky. It was a little unnerving to see “cannibalism” as one of the clues. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Cough, cough!

Green group hint: Reel it in.

Blue group hint: Spin a web.

Purple group hint: Not Sunday or Tuesday.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Mass of smoke.

Green group: Fishing gear.

Blue group: Associated with black widow spiders.

Purple group: ____ Monday.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is mass of smoke. The four answers are billow, cloud, plume and puff.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is fishing gear. The four answers are bait, hook, net and rod.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is associated with black widow spiders. The four answers are cannibalism, hourglass, venom and web.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ Monday. The four answers are blue, cyber, manic and meatless.

Anyone looking to upgrade to the next Mac Studio or MacBook Pro might have to wait a little longer, thanks to the ongoing global memory shortage. As reported by Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, “at least two of the company’s upcoming machines … could debut a little later than the company initially planned,” referencing the refreshes to Apple’s desktop and its laptop that’s expected to get a touchscreen.

Bloomberg reported that the upcoming Mac Studio, which follows up the current lineup in the M4 Max and M3 Ultra configurations, was first expected to release in the middle of the year. However, Apple is already dealing with shortages of its existing Mac Studio stock, likely due to the device being a popular choice for anyone running local AI models. With no stop to the shortage in sight, Gurman predicted that the refreshed Mac Studio’s release could be postponed to around October instead.

It’s not just Apple’s desktop offerings being affected. Gurman also reported that the release of the next MacBook Pro could be delayed. While Gurman said the release timeline of the touchscreen MacBook Pro could be between the end of 2026 to early 2027, he’s now predicting that it would arrive toward the later end of that timeline. Of course, Apple isn’t the only consumer tech company heavily affected by the RAM shortage. However, Apple can at least take advantage of its successful MacBook Neo release amidst the memory shortage crisis affecting all laptop makers.

Live Science spoke with physicist David Gross, who today received the $3 million “Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics”. He was part of a trio that won the 2004 physics Nobel prize for research that helped complete the Standard Model of particle physics. But when asked if physics will reach a unified theory of the fundamental forces of nature within 50 years, Gross has a surprising answer. “Currently, I spend part of my time trying to tell people… that the chances of you living 50 [more] years are very small.”

Cold War estimates for a 1% chance of nuclear war each year seem low, Gross says. “The chances are more likely 2%. So that’s a 1-in-50 chance every year.”

David Gross: The expected lifetime, in the case of 2% [per year], is about 35 years. [The expected lifetime is the average time it would take to have had a nuclear war by then. It is calculated using similar equations as those used to determine the “half-life” of a radioactive material.]

Live Science: So what do you suggest as remedies to lower that risk?

Gross: We had something called the Nobel Laureate Assembly for reducing the risk of nuclear war in Chicago last year. There are steps, which are easy to take — for nations, I mean. For example, talk to each other. In the last 10 years, there are no treaties anymore. We’re entering an incredible arms race.

We have three super nuclear powers. People are talking about using nuclear weapons; there’s a major war going on in the middle of Europe; we’re bombing Iran; India and Pakistan almost went to war. OK, so that’s increased the chance [of nuclear war]. I would really like to have a solid estimate — it might be more, and I think I’m being conservative — but a 2% estimate [of nuclear war] in today’s crazy world.

Live Science: Do you think we’ll ever get to a place where we get rid of nuclear weapons?

Gross: We’re not recommending that. That’s idealistic, but yes, I hope so. Because if you don’t, there’s always some risk an AI 100 years from now [could launch nuclear weapons], but chances of [humanity] living, with this estimate, 100 years, is very small, and living 200 years is infinitesimal. So [the answer to] Fermi’s question of “Where are the civilizations, all the intelligent organisms around the galaxy, and why don’t they talk to us?” is that they’ve killed themselves…

There are now nine nuclear powers. Even three is infinitely more complicated than two. The agreements, the norms between countries, are all falling apart. Weapons are getting crazier. Automation, and perhaps even AI, will be in control of those instruments pretty soon… It’s going to be very hard to resist making AI make decisions because it acts so fast.
He points out that with the threat of climate change, “people have done something,” even though “It’s a much harder argument to make than about nuclear weapons.

“We made them; we can stop them.”

Thanks to hwstar (Slashdot reader #35,834) for sharing the article.

To make up for an incredibly laughable inaugural event, Beijing is running back its humanoid robot half-marathon. Fortunately, the event that pits humanoid robots made by Chinese companies against each other across 13 miles went a lot smoother this year.

This year’s half-marathon hosted more than 100 competitors, with first place going to Honor, better known for its smartphones, and its red-clad robot named Lightning. Living up to the name, the gold medalist finished the race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. That’s several minutes faster than the human record that was recently set by Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo last month.

Honor swept the other podium spots, with the important caveat that they all navigated the course autonomously, according to the state-sponsored television news agency CCTV. That’s a massive improvement over last year, where the fastest time among 21 robots was achieved by Tiangong Ultra with a record of two hours and 40 minutes. Last year’s event saw many of the bipedal robots receiving assistance from human operators who ran alongside them, as well as some comical mishaps, like falling at the starting line.

However, the BBC reported that around 40 percent of the robots competed autonomously this year, while the rest were remote-controlled. Despite the rapid improvements, this year’s event still had its fair share of crashes, even from Honor’s robots.