Excellent review, as ever @grizzlybeast and beautifully presented. My only slight personal point of difference is with soundstage depth .. I have listened to quite a few live recordings (both small & large venue) and found the AFO to have clear depth distinction with excellent ambient cues. The lingering echoes seem to go deep into the stage recess. It may just be equipment differences, I'm not sure.
Warranty issues are pretty rare. Outside the first batch where we brought some back the failure rate on AEON seems so far consistent with ETHER, which is less than 0.5%, maybe closer to 0.25%. The headphones are very reliable.
Our general policy is that if a headphone has been received and is less than 30 days old we pay shipping both ways to give global owners some comfort that there's not a big risk here, especially since the few problems we have are usually when the headphone is new.
ALSO: XLR will be available for AEON starting tonight.
I didn't know about the policy.. However for this time i bought it from an uk dealer.
Ok i'll let it burn in with some pink noise today, can't wait to use it this evening, and try it with games and movies
I've heard other people refer to 'pink noise' to run in equipment... would it not be better to just play some regular music on repeat ? I also wonder if the two sides headphones should be kept slightly apart when running-in rather than 'blasting' into each other ... but, I'm no engineer !
I agree with Charente and was also a bit surprised by this point as I think it is a big asset of the headphone.
I really loved the depth and room acoustic perception.
I've heard other people refer to 'pink noise' to run in equipment... would it not be better to just play some regular music on repeat ? I also wonder if the two sides headphones should be kept slightly apart when running-in rather than 'blasting' into each other ... but, I'm no engineer !
I burn all cans with an old NAD integrated & Sony CD player. Use a variety of CDs on repeat, moderate volume, easily getting over 150 hrs in a week. The cans are on a dummy head (not mine) to approximate what the drivers do on a human head.
I don't have any scientific basis for this, it just seems common sensical and safe.
at the moment i'm using 2notch filters. i like them very much.. i didn't like aeon closed, even with the filters. with this i don't miss lcd2 and hd650 so much.. very warm, nice soundstage, i like instruments separation. the only problem is that in europe we pay 900euros.... i paid 970 shipping and fees included... for 800 us dollars (670euros) it would be the best headphone in the price range and above.. at970... well there are more competitors....
Congrats man, these headphones are amazing!! I started on the 1 notch, then moved to the black tuning pads. I hadn't even considered the 2 notch ones yet and surprisingly their really really nice with them. Like wow, there's a wonderful warmth to it.
On another note, is there anyway to acquire a Brown leather headband?
I don't really enjoy the PM3, I just keep it as a reference headphone to compare to because of its great frequency balance. For what it's worth, I prefer headphones with warm-tilting midrange and slight treble emphasis. Compared to the PM3, the Aeon Open is just that. However, there's a discontinuity between the treble around 5-7khz and the treble around 8-10khz. It leaves the treble around 8-10khz sounding a little sharp as a result.
That is in fact correct, every headphone we've designed from the ground up has landed on the WOF.
Tyll's review definitely hit on a few points I appreciated. The first was his observation that it doesn't sound like it measures. I think this is quite true, his response mirrors ours and normally a headphone with a curve like this would not be one I'd expect to like, I'd think the bass would be totally over the top and the mids too recessed, but it doesn't play that way, the mids are really present and the bass doesn't bloat male vocals. As always, I voice by ear and use measurements to validate/disprove ideas and then to ensure consistency in production. However, with this headphone the experience was so different from the measurement results I really had to look at the measurements in a different light. I found when I skewed the headphone toward my expectation on response curve the result was less enjoyable, so I finally just let that go.
The second was that it even made poorly recorded music sound OK. To me voicing this headphone was really about engagement and fun, but not in the normal sense "fun" is used in headphones. This is something I deliberately designed towards as part of finding that sense of engagement. I took a different approach altogether for the sound here, and it was more informed by trying to create an experience "closer to live."
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