Astell&Kern JH Audio Siren Series Layla

Preamble:
The Layla has always been one of the iems on my bucket list since my early forays into the hobby. As always, the price of a custom and the FMJ was the prohibiting factor. I dwiddled and dwaddled until Headfoneshop cleared their stock and the FMJs were consigned to the annals of audio history. I held out hope for another Layla revision since JH keeps rereleasing variants on shell shape and custom designs like KB does with the Andromeda. And that didn't really work out because they dropped the Aeon which came with a ludicirious price tag. Not to mention the new 7 pin connector, which being a notorious cable swapping addict, didn't make things better. In addition to the price tag, I had some concerns about shelling out even for a used Layla: Namely the fit given my ears hit and miss record with universal shells; And the dreaded upper mid recession. It's no secret that I'm a fan of the boosted upper mid tuning that has come out in recent years. Some fellow Canuck HFers who had a good idea of my preferences recommended that I avoid JH and pretty much ended my desire to buy ever used Layla popping up in classifieds. So it seemed that I was doomed to not ever trying a JH iem.


That was until @riverground PM'd me out of nowhere (Like Kaworu busting out the 13th Eva) asking if I wanted to borrow his Layla V1's. After some dwadling, we finally agreed to meet up near my place and he'd drop off the Layla's when he picked up my Stormbreaker. So these impressions are thanks to a friendly local Canuck!

Design + Testing and other things:
Given the condition of some V1 units I've seen on sale, I have to admit that I'm impressed with how pristine these ones are! Anyhow onto the shells. So I mentioned thhe fit being of concern to me. I was super worried given the relatively thin nozzle with a deep insertion, plus the angle of the nozzle. After playing around with tips I got with the Layla, I settle on the small ones and fit was actually perfect, despite sticking out a bit more than the Odin. Surprisingly The Odin and Layla are about equal size from faceplate to the tips, with the Layla taking more volume. So no Frankenstein Bolts (Maybe more like Celebi's in my ear?). With that out of the way, I decided to do so some listening while I revised my Odin impressions. Sadly the 1A needed to be charged and this time I opted to use the 789 (That and playing with the bass pots). Low gain, around the 9-10 0'clock area (Depending on the bass pot), tips are errrr you'll need to ask @riverground about those.

Bass:
After some playing around I found my preference for the bass pot at 2'o Clock position. The bass tends to lean toward a more reference sound with a mid bass bias.The subbass extension is good, but was masked by the mid bass bias until the bass pot was turned to max. Subbass became much more present, however the corresponding mid bass boost makes it extremely fatiguing for my ears, probably the fastest I've had mid bass induced fatigue build up. Despite all this, this does make my list of Top 10 BA Bass setups due how good it sounds and the variability due to the pots.


Mids:
The mids are rather forward mids and always come across clear with none of the shoutiness or overly amount of space I found at times on the Zeus and are well bodied to boot. I found a slight recession in male vocals inversely proportionate to the amount of bass (not to the point of bleed though) in the track. At not point do the bass frequencies bleed over, even at the head thumping unleash your inner ~~Angel to trigger the 3rd and 4th Impacts~~ basshead 4'oclock. It seems appropriate to respect that choice rather than a flaw though.

So I mentioned that the upper mids were an area of concern. My personal preference is for the upper mid boosted tunings that how been popular lately as I find that the closest to what I hear with my ears in that that area. I can live with a plateau in that area coming off pinna gain, but a recession is a no no. I fully expected for me to rip the Layla out of my ears (faster than the Eva 01 ripping out the core of an Angel) and then proceed to dunk it in a bucket of dog's blood like I did to the Sultan (Well maybe not THAT bad, Noble has no excuse, but JH hasn't really changed Layla). So I was nicely surprised (in a way similar to the VE8) how that recession came out to my ears. Most female vocals will sound perfectly fine, but those in the higher registers or has range that goes into that area will take a hit. I expected hell, but walk away with a "this is acceptable". Now another thing I prefer is a boosted lower treble to go with the upper mid boost and JH does do that with the Layla coming out from the recession, the boost is not as much as I would like, but does compensate for the upper mid recession. A small minor thing is that the upper mid to lower treble regions ends up sounding a little weird and "not as natural", but again it's a minor nitpick given the tuning.

Treble:
I actually found the treble...boring. Smooth, lacking a bit of excitement and air. No sibilance AT ALL. It's rare that I find an iem that can make Galaxy Supernove boring, but by gosh JH! Sorta similar to the u12t treble, but just a tad more boring and like the rest of the frequencies, it seems to be more of a preference than anything I can find wrong with the Layla

Conclusion:
Overall, Layla has a good soundstage size that's not overly big and leans towards a more technical sound. At this point yes, it's a 6 year old monitor that's had it's paint changed more than the internals of the Andromeda, but the adage of don't fix it if it ain't broke applies here. There really isn't anywhere further for the Layla to go, except for maybe minor tuning tweaks and a million variants in that direction ala Campfire, but JH is not exactly KB. It's also worth keeping in mind that JH's main market is for stage/studio monitors and not audiophiles in general, once I swapped into this mindset it brought a greater appreciation for why Layla is the way she is, why JH made her that way, and how she's meant to be enjoyed.