HeAudio 1.3, 1.2B and the new JADE Stat Headphones

[powertoold]

Originally Posted by -=Germania=-

I had a chance to A/B the Orpheus and the JADE yesterday (along with the Baby O's being present as well as the O2)

Oh dang, it's the match-up of the century!

[-=Germania=-]

I think that I preferred the JADE, but when you come across the Holy Four of electrostats.....Life doesn't get much better.

It might come all down to preference.

Granted, most of my listening time was spent with the JADE and Orpheus.
Too bad that I now know that is where I heading when life permits it.

[powertoold]

Originally Posted by -=Germania=-

I think that I preferred the JADE, but when you come across the Holy Four of electrostats.....Life doesn't get much better.

It might come all down to preference.

Granted, most of my listening time was spent with the JADE and Orpheus.
Too bad that I now know that is where I heading when life permits it.

Oh sagely one who has experienced all life has to offer, would your highness please comment on the Jade compared to your Lambdas?

[Jon L]

Originally Posted by number1sixerfan

How did they compare to the Baby O? I love the HE60, it is without a doubt my favorite can out of all the ones I have owned.

Well, I can chime in since I've been comparing my HE60 and latest 1.2b for a long time now. In the beginning, I thought 1.2b would be all I need b/c of its exciting, very-detailed midrange, which is my "thing". However, after learning the different tube/cable combo's that optimize each, I honestly can't say I prefer one or the other. Must have both, which is saying a lot since I tend to prefer HE60 over even HE90 with certain music genres.

[immtbiker]

Originally Posted by Jon L

Must have both...

Must have both...Must have both...Miles to go before I sleep.

[RDK845]

May be some headfiers wants to hear more about this little electrostat event. So here goes what I experienced in some detail before the memory becomes blurred. It is my first time writing this type of stuff, so please pardon me if it turns out not so good.

My primary goal attending this meet was to make my own assessment on Jade, since I’ve been considering Jade, Omega II and HE60 for my office set-up. My home reference system is K1000 / modified dared 845 SET/ DIY squeezebox based computer audio player, which I brought to the ChiUniFI meet. Based on my short experience at a couple of meets, I feel this system can compete with almost any top of the line dynamic headphone and amp with CD player priced > a few K$. My listening preference is acoustical, mostly classical music.

At the meet, I tried Feng’s (head-direct) Jade/HE audio amp/Meridian CDP (may be 808) using Joshua Bell’s Beethoven Violin Concerto. Almost immediately, I felt the sound was somewhat overly boomy to my tastes and then I noticed the intimacy level is perhaps one or two notch lower than the K1K set-up. Coming back and forth between my reference set-up (until cable of 1 channel of K1K gave up) and HEAD-Direct set-up, confirmed this impression. Of course part of this could be coming from the difference in sound signature of sources, but needless to say I was a bit disappointed at this point. (For Head-Direct defense, Feng told us that the amp was not the top of line they have in their sleeves.)

After the meet, about 8-9 of us had a great time at Ray’s place comparing HE90, Omega II, HE60 and Jade, using his prototype electrostat headphone amp / preamplifier. Ray guided the trials with a sound and systematic way. We preped our ears with Ray’s speaker system consisting of Blue Heron Speakers from Mapletree / Cary amp (I think it was CAD 805) / prototype amp in preamp mod / Turntable. Except the preamp, which I don’t know what the price would be, all the other components individually cost more than 10K. The system sounded as good as or better than what the price dictated. I ended up picking Heifetz's Glazunov Violin concerto (Living Stereo) LP for a trial and it sounded great, having all hi-fi aspects, great details revealing Heifetz’s delicate variation of intonation and bowing techniques, while sounding very natural, lively and overall well composed from top to bottom. I would guess that the system sounded slightly rich in midrange with better than average bass dynamics compared to similar system in the price range, but I think that is Ray’s personal preference.

Using same music and source, we now flip the prototype to electrostat headphone amp mod and A/Bed HE90 and Jade. The HE90 sounded fantastic, similar sounding to the speaker system in tone and detail (with slightly smoother sound signature than those of speaker) which was amazing. I should note thought, that it was my first time to listen to a HE90. Immediately after I switched to Jade, I noticed the treble of violin has some sparkle to it, which was not there with HE 90. The sound stage appeared to be a bit larger, with a sense of more separation between instruments. The latter may have been a good thing in technical terms if it was for speaker system, but to me, with headphone, it brought out tiny unnaturalness to the music, particularly when combined with the more excited trebles. Other aspects like details, and dynamics seemed to be similar level to those of HE90.

Later we compared Ray’s HE60 to HE90 and Jade. According to Ray, he replaced the driver of this HE60 to the latest one, and this made its sound signature considerably smoother than the original HE60. He said the original HE60 was too bright to his taste. As soon as I put on this HE60, it was rather clear that the sound stage is noticeably smaller, top end may be slightly less extended and midrange is slightly congested (or less transparent) compared to HE90. This is somewhat different from what I read about the HE60, so it adds to the weight on what Ray mentioned about his HE60. I felt that Jade seemed to have somewhat larger soundstage and has slightly better transparency then this particular HE60.

Finally Ray brought in his omega 007A and we did stock 007A vs. HE90 vs. Jade. At this point we were using only female voices like Nora Jones for comparison which has less extended top and bottom than classical orchestra, but the difference in sound signature of 007A from Jade and Sennheisers was quite apparent. It sounded like as if very low bass is somewhat cut-off, and high bass to low mid is a little congested, while mid itself sounded more laid back then the others. Overall it was somewhat less involving and flatter than the rest. I’m not sure whether I’m putting this in right word, but it had this slight delicate or frail nature to the sound, somewhat similar to what I found from some Audio Technica phones.

But in the end, this last comparison was a somewhat moot point, since Ray’s amp was voiced using HE90 and one probably should not expect to hear good performance of a 007A, unless the amp was voiced with it in mind. In fact Ray continued to show how tweaking may make the amp sound more fit to 007A, but this post is already way too long to discuss that. I should also note that never listened to 007A with a Blue Hawaii.

In regards of fit and finish issue, Jade felt somewhat nicer overall than what I imagined from pictures, better than HE60 which was plasticky. All three headphones were comfortable, where Jade felt slightly heavier than Omega II which I thought, was most comfortable between 4 phones.

In conclusion, I felt Jade performed very well against Sennheiser stats at least when hooked up with very good gears. But I suspect many of us will be using less expensive gears than Ray’s, so it is upto users to discover good matching gears to bring out the best of them. Also I was told that the Jade used in the meet IS Immtbiker’s, so we have sampled only one Jade so far.

After some thought, I decided to order Jade as opposed to going with OII MK1 used, since at least initially, I will be using some kind of transformer box with speaker amps to power my electrostat headphone and I thought brighter headphone may be better in such set-up.

YMMV.

Thanks.

-John

[powertoold]

This is probably the best writeup I've read on the Jade! Thanks!

It's often very difficult to properly compare headphones because minor differences in volume can result in perceptive differences.

[Akabeth]

^ Wow nice write up John and congrats with your Jade purchase. Now you just have to find the right amp!

Also, I didn't know that the Omega Ray brought upstairs was the 007A. I thought it's the 007 mkII.

[juzmister]

Great writeup...Did you guys hook the Jade up to any other amps?

[RDK845]

Originally Posted by juzmister

Great writeup...Did you guys hook the Jade up to any other amps?

I don't know what was tried at the meet itself. At Ray's place, we only used his prototype.

[RDK845]

Originally Posted by powertoold

It's often very difficult to properly compare headphones because minor differences in volume can result in perceptive differences.

I think there were some SL differences between phones, but at least between Jade and Sennheisers it was not huge differences. And the sound signatures were fairly apparent and consistant at the volume level range, we were using, which were rather quite high...

[juzmister]

Does the Jade have a stax connector?

[ironbut]

Just to keep other folks thinking about order a Jade informed, here's a shipping notification I just received from Fang;


Thanks for your order. The Jade headphones will be shipped tomorrow from Beijing, China via EMS Express mail. It will took 5-6 business days to arrive US and 2-3 business days to deliver to your address. We will update your tracking info from time to time.

[RDK845]

Originally Posted by juzmister

Does the Jade have a stax connector?

The one that appeared at the meet was termiated with 4 pin neutrik connector and had an extra conver to stax pro connector.

[-=Germania=-]

RDK845,

You are SPOT-ON with my same impressions and I think that your post reflects the feelings of almost everyone else in the room (based on discussion while there).