Headphones

Having already moved successfully into the iDevice docking and low-cost earphone spaces, Altec Lansing is testing the premium headphone market. But rather than looking to pick up a celebrity endorser, they've instead gone high-end, announcing today a full line of custom-fit in-ear 'phones: the A1, A2, and A3, offering one, two, and three balanced armature drivers respectively, in medical-grade silicone housings.

S+V dropped by the Beats by Dr. Dre/Monster Cable holiday product preview last night, to check out what the company had to offer to follow up on the Beats Pro headphones we looked at in this month's headphone shootout.

The success of Dr. Dre's Beats sent up a signal flare that alerted the rest of the celebrigentsia — who've realized that there's no safe money in music anymore — that there was cash to be had in them thar ‘phones. They've since had at it in a big way, with everyone from Justin Bieber to Quincy Jones to the estates of Miles Davis and Bob Marley slapping their names on hardware.

But are any of these headphones any good? We set out to figure out which — if any — of these celebs deserve your hard-earned dollars. We called in a team of expert listeners to pick 'em apart, and then put each headphone through some rigorous lab testing to figure out what was really going on underneath those fancy designs.