Headphones

The Fostex Company was founded in July 1973 by Foster Electric Co Ltd (Tokyo), one of the world's largest OEM speaker and transducer producers. Fostex directly supplied consumers with speaker components – there was a keenness then to build DIY loudspeakers in Japan – and continues to do so. Its RP (Regular Phase) technology features in speakers, microphones and headphones, with the T20RP a popular studio monitoring example. In 1978 the company began to make small pro-use loudspeakers and its Fostex 6301B was superseded by the active 6301NB, with 20W of Class D amplification. In 1983 Fostex developed a series of four-track recorders: the A-8 the first design to offer eight tracks on ¼in tape. Twelve years later we saw the DMT-8 digital recorder, while Fostex's DAT mastering machines gave way in 2001/2 to recorders writing to DVD-RAM. The Fostex RP headphone series (now in Mk3 form) provides the basis for the Dekoni Audio Blue. We reviewed the massive HP-V8 tube headphone preamplifier in HFN Jun '16.