Aroma Jewel: pkcpga Impressions
Analog Perfection
I purchased the Aroma Jewel from
@MusicTeck who I highly recommend, the Jewel arrived quickly, 2 days after I ordered it. And the follow up cable arrived the next day, very impressive service.
I paired the Jewel with N8ii in P+ class AB tube mode. Along with PW Audio’s First Times cable.
For myself this combo fits the photo above as it’s best description down to the cartridge I decided to photograph it with. The Jewel with FT and N8ii has an analog, airy and detailed sound. It sounds like one of my Lynn tables with an Ortofon MC cartridge, it has that wide soundstage, airy detailed highs with lovely slightly rounded layered edges. No harsh or teeth clenching details but perfectly separated clean details. Jewel has a detailed well placed stage with instruments coming from right where you’d expect them with amazing left to right separation and a nice focused center stage when called for.
The Jewel’s tonality took me for a bit of a surprise, my first thought was 6 EST with 6 BA’s and only 1 DD, that this was going to be a bright IEM. I found the Jewel to be very neutral with a touch of a bass bump. The EST’s provide a lot of air and details, but they are very well tuned and not forward or harsh but extremely well controlled. The BA’s for mids and upper bass are very neutral and natural sounding allowing for excellent details with exceptional separation between vocals and instruments. Everything even in very congested passages has its place. Vocals have a great tone and natural texture, nothing sounds thin or overly weighted or syrupy. The DD provides very nice deep bass going into sub categories. Bass is very natural and will be very present when the song calls for it but will not bleed into mids or deep make vocals. Bass does not go into bass head territory or extend past natural sounding. Sub bass can be felt by the nature of DD’s, mid bass it not very boosted but natural, detailed and clean sounding. Bass can be slow rolling or rapid depending on what the song calls for, which along with the felt air movement/vibration is the big advantage to the DD for bass over BA’s.
Jewel comes in safe like metal case, make sure you get instructions on how to open it. The case slides open to the right with some pressure on the right edge. The included leather case is very nice, much better fitting of the IEM with cable then the EVO or Odin cases. The included cable I personally did not like due to microphonic and cheap feeling for an IEM of this price point. The FT cable was a perfect up grade, slightly warmed up vocals with offering a slightly bigger soundstage over the stock cable.
Stock cable looks nice and is very comfortable, just wasn’t my cup of tea with its microphonic.
Comparing to Odin: The Jewel is the step up from the Odin I was looking for. It’s more detailed, better separation all while keeping the DD bass and adding a bit of warmth in vocals. The Jewel has less of a bump in the upper mids if your sensitive to that but it still has a bump there. Difference is the Jewel is much more refined and looses the hard forward edges for soft layered edges. Deep male vocals all the way to soprano are equally present. For myself the Jewel is the refined Odin with a more analog sound without becoming syrupy.
I no longer have the Traillii to compare the Jewel with. All I can say it the Trailli never meshed well with me. Was not a fan of its bass, very well boosted just less natural sounding and feeling to me. Traillii had more mid bass presence but a little less sub bass extension. Traillii also had warmer less layered mids with a little harder edged highs from my notes and memory. Although it’s hard to compare an IEM I haven’t owned in a while, but I have decided to demo it again multiple times to make sure I didn’t make a mistake in selling it and hearing so many rave about it. After hearing the Jewel I definitely did not, the Jewel fits my sound preference much better.
The Jewel is one of those IEMs like the A12t that plays well with all music types and sounds great even with poorly recorded songs. It tends to bring the best out in almost everything I’ve played with it. The Jewel has very good macro dynamics but is not as powerful as EVO or legend. Since owning the Jewel the only other IEM I’ve reached for is EVO and that was for some EDM music that someone suggested on here. Which there really is no replacement for EVO if you are craving big deep bass with big macro dynamic swings. Currently I’m quite happy with N8ii, Jewel and EVO combo, covers all my music playlists. The Jewel also paired very well with my sp2000 and m15, I just preferred the N8ii for it’s expansive soundstage and in P+ mode stronger macro dynamics. The Jewel definitely pair up very well as your source improves.
