It also comes down to preferences. Some people really get off on hearing every last detail, down to the cough in Row B, while others seek an emotional connection with the music regardless of details (and in some cases, less is actually more when it comes to sound preference). It's the same as the endless quest for more screen resolution, whereas some movies just 'feel better' at 1080P than they do at 8K despite all the extra detail (especially older/poor transfers and equivalent music recordings).
Precog's IEM Reviews & Impressions
- Thread starter Precogvision
- Start date
Hey all, my MEST MKII review has been published here.
Some other quick updates:
Some other quick updates:
- I probably won't be dropping as many impressions or reviews in the coming weeks, as I'll be moving again for college. But feel free to continue asking questions
- The Symphonium Helios and the Elysian X (and likely the Elysian Terminator) are next after some headphones I have to review.
- Next "big" updates for the thread will likely revolve around impressions of CanJam SoCal which I will be attending with the rest of the Headphones.com crew.
- Vision Ears have received the second VE7 and they have confirmed that it was indeed defective. Hopefully a replacement is sent out soon.
JH Audio Layla Aion Impressions
Jerry Harvey Audio is not a brand with much presence on these forums. But take a dip into the professional world, and JH Audio is suddenly one of the biggest names on the block with no shortage of well-known musicians using their IEMs. It should come as no surprise that JH Audio has bigger priorities than us casual hobbyists. However, this does beg the question: How good are their IEMs actually? Courtesy of Headphones.com, I currently have the Layla Aion on hand for review. The Layla Aion is a collaboration between JH Audio and Astell&Kern that sports 12BAs and that will set you back $3500. From what I can see, it's pretty similar to the Layla, JH Audio's halo model, so this should set a reasonable precedent for what we can expect from the brand.
The Layla Aion has a pair of bass dials integrated in its cable for each of the Left/Right channels. You turn these dials to increase/decrease bass presence; I'm guessing these dials work via adjusting impedance accordingly. Pretty cool. But the maximum bass setting is not good at all. On this setting, the Layla Aion sounds overly bloated with the farty quality that characterizes BA drivers having been pushed past their limits. As a whole, the sound signature brings to mind the dreaded descriptor of "mud-fi". Best to lay off the bass; personally, I chose to set the dial to the 12 o'clock position. On this setting, the Layla Aion's bass just sounds like normal BA bass; it has no slam, no dynamics. Pretty inoffensive for what it's worth.
But the midrange of the Layla Aion is an affront to any self-respecting weeb listener. Actually, scratch that: any listener with normal hearing. The Layla Aion's pinna compensation is non-existent, falling outside the scope of any academic target curve. You have a minor bump at 1.3kHz and then an abrupt dip after, where most IEMs would be rising. This is followed by a baby hump at 3kHz which has no place being there. The Layla Aion effectively has no upper-midrange; female vocals sound incredibly suppressed and diffused. Male vocals sound slightly more correct, but that's not a high bar. This IEM is effectively limited to a very specific subset of music - dark, slow, male vocal tracks - to sound passable.
You'll notice I said "dark" tracks, so let's talk about the Layla Aion's treble. Our perception of the treble frequencies is partially baked into the balance struck with the bass frequencies. But feel free to dial back the bass all you want - to the bare minimum - because it doesn't change the Layla Aion fundamentally having almost zero treble extension. Subjectively, and on paper, the Layla Aion's treble rolls off even earlier than 10kHz. Maybe JH Audio was going all-in on a more relaxed tuning, I don't know. But it's not an excuse. The Layla Aion still sounds fatiguing (even if it doesn't hit me at first) because of how off the 7kHz peak is contrasted to the rest of the treble response. There's also, like, $25 IEMs with better treble extension than this.
If you're wondering about technicalities, they're not good. As in "not good to the point of which I normally don't take the time to talk about it" not good. But the Layla Aion isn't some random, sub-$100 IEM. It's a multi-kilobuck IEM with expectations. Notes are blunted from head-to-toe. Staging is slightly better than average, but individual instrument lines are smushed and nigh impossible to discern from one another. The Layla Aion sounds incredibly compressed and boring; perhaps this perception is partly baked into its lack of extension. No matter how you cut it, there's no way you'd know that this IEM has 12BAs. There are 1BA IEMs, such as the Etymotic ER3XR, that handily out-resolve the Layla Aion.
The JH Audio Layla Aion. A pretty IEM that doesn't sound so pretty in my opinion.
Score: 3/10
Jerry Harvey Audio is not a brand with much presence on these forums. But take a dip into the professional world, and JH Audio is suddenly one of the biggest names on the block with no shortage of well-known musicians using their IEMs. It should come as no surprise that JH Audio has bigger priorities than us casual hobbyists. However, this does beg the question: How good are their IEMs actually? Courtesy of Headphones.com, I currently have the Layla Aion on hand for review. The Layla Aion is a collaboration between JH Audio and Astell&Kern that sports 12BAs and that will set you back $3500. From what I can see, it's pretty similar to the Layla, JH Audio's halo model, so this should set a reasonable precedent for what we can expect from the brand.
The Layla Aion has a pair of bass dials integrated in its cable for each of the Left/Right channels. You turn these dials to increase/decrease bass presence; I'm guessing these dials work via adjusting impedance accordingly. Pretty cool. But the maximum bass setting is not good at all. On this setting, the Layla Aion sounds overly bloated with the farty quality that characterizes BA drivers having been pushed past their limits. As a whole, the sound signature brings to mind the dreaded descriptor of "mud-fi". Best to lay off the bass; personally, I chose to set the dial to the 12 o'clock position. On this setting, the Layla Aion's bass just sounds like normal BA bass; it has no slam, no dynamics. Pretty inoffensive for what it's worth.
But the midrange of the Layla Aion is an affront to any self-respecting weeb listener. Actually, scratch that: any listener with normal hearing. The Layla Aion's pinna compensation is non-existent, falling outside the scope of any academic target curve. You have a minor bump at 1.3kHz and then an abrupt dip after, where most IEMs would be rising. This is followed by a baby hump at 3kHz which has no place being there. The Layla Aion effectively has no upper-midrange; female vocals sound incredibly suppressed and diffused. Male vocals sound slightly more correct, but that's not a high bar. This IEM is effectively limited to a very specific subset of music - dark, slow, male vocal tracks - to sound passable.
You'll notice I said "dark" tracks, so let's talk about the Layla Aion's treble. Our perception of the treble frequencies is partially baked into the balance struck with the bass frequencies. But feel free to dial back the bass all you want - to the bare minimum - because it doesn't change the Layla Aion fundamentally having almost zero treble extension. Subjectively, and on paper, the Layla Aion's treble rolls off even earlier than 10kHz. Maybe JH Audio was going all-in on a more relaxed tuning, I don't know. But it's not an excuse. The Layla Aion still sounds fatiguing (even if it doesn't hit me at first) because of how off the 7kHz peak is contrasted to the rest of the treble response. There's also, like, $25 IEMs with better treble extension than this.
If you're wondering about technicalities, they're not good. As in "not good to the point of which I normally don't take the time to talk about it" not good. But the Layla Aion isn't some random, sub-$100 IEM. It's a multi-kilobuck IEM with expectations. Notes are blunted from head-to-toe. Staging is slightly better than average, but individual instrument lines are smushed and nigh impossible to discern from one another. The Layla Aion sounds incredibly compressed and boring; perhaps this perception is partly baked into its lack of extension. No matter how you cut it, there's no way you'd know that this IEM has 12BAs. There are 1BA IEMs, such as the Etymotic ER3XR, that handily out-resolve the Layla Aion.
The JH Audio Layla Aion. A pretty IEM that doesn't sound so pretty in my opinion.
Score: 3/10
InvisibleInk
Headphoneus Supremus
I enjoyed this beat down while listening to my trusty ER3XR.JH Audio Layla Aion Impressions
Jerry Harvey Audio is not a brand with much presence on these forums. But take a dip into the professional world, and JH Audio is suddenly one of the biggest names on the block with no shortage of well-known musicians using their IEMs. It should come as no surprise that JH Audio has bigger priorities than us casual hobbyists. However, this does beg the question: How good are their IEMs actually? Courtesy of Headphones.com, I currently have the Layla Aion on hand for review. The Layla Aion is a collaboration between JH Audio and Astell&Kern that sports 12BAs and that will set you back $3500. From what I can see, it's pretty similar to the Layla, JH Audio's halo model, so this should set a reasonable precedent for what we can expect from the brand.
The Layla Aion has a pair of bass dials integrated in its cable for each of the Left/Right channels. You turn these dials to increase/decrease bass presence; I'm guessing these dials work via adjusting impedance accordingly. Pretty cool. But the maximum bass setting is not good at all. On this setting, the Layla Aion sounds overly bloated with the farty quality that characterizes BA drivers having been pushed past their limits. As a whole, the sound signature brings to mind the dreaded descriptor of "mud-fi". Best to lay off the bass; personally, I chose to set the dial to the 12 o'clock position. On this setting, the Layla Aion's bass just sounds like normal BA bass; it has no slam, no dynamics. Pretty inoffensive for what it's worth.
But the midrange of the Layla Aion is an affront to any self-respecting weeb listener. Actually, scratch that: any listener with normal hearing. The Layla Aion's pinna compensation is non-existent, falling outside the scope of any academic target curve. You have a minor bump at 1.3kHz and then an abrupt dip after, where most IEMs would be rising. This is followed by a baby hump at 3kHz which has no place being there. The Layla Aion effectively has no upper-midrange; female vocals sound incredibly suppressed and diffused. Male vocals sound slightly more correct, but that's not a high bar. This IEM is effectively limited to a very specific subset of music - dark, slow, male vocal tracks - to sound passable.
You'll notice I said "dark" tracks, so let's talk about the Layla Aion's treble. Our perception of the treble frequencies is partially baked into the balance struck with the bass frequencies. But feel free to dial back the bass all you want - to the bare minimum - because it doesn't change the Layla Aion fundamentally having almost zero treble extension. Subjectively, and on paper, the Layla Aion's treble rolls off even earlier than 10kHz. Maybe JH Audio was going all-in on a more relaxed tuning, I don't know. But it's not an excuse. The Layla Aion still sounds fatiguing (even if it doesn't hit me at first) because of how off the 7kHz peak is contrasted to the rest of the treble response. There's also, like, $25 IEMs with better treble extension than this.
If you're wondering about technicalities, they're not good. As in "not good to the point of which I normally don't take the time to talk about it" not good. But the Layla Aion isn't some random, sub-$100 IEM. It's a multi-kilobuck IEM with expectations. Notes are blunted from head-to-toe. Staging is slightly better than average, but individual instrument lines are smushed and nigh impossible to discern from one another. The Layla Aion sounds incredibly compressed and boring; perhaps this perception is partly baked into its lack of extension. No matter how you cut it, there's no way you'd know that this IEM has 12BAs. There are 1BA IEMs, such as the Etymotic ER3XR, that handily out-resolve the Layla Aion.
The JH Audio Layla Aion. A pretty IEM that doesn't sound so pretty in my opinion.
Score: 3/10
That's a little over $1100 per point. Not good.JH Audio Layla Aion Impressions
Jerry Harvey Audio is not a brand with much presence on these forums. But take a dip into the professional world, and JH Audio is suddenly one of the biggest names on the block with no shortage of well-known musicians using their IEMs. It should come as no surprise that JH Audio has bigger priorities than us casual hobbyists. However, this does beg the question: How good are their IEMs actually? Courtesy of Headphones.com, I currently have the Layla Aion on hand for review. The Layla Aion is a collaboration between JH Audio and Astell&Kern that sports 12BAs and that will set you back $3500. From what I can see, it's pretty similar to the Layla, JH Audio's halo model, so this should set a reasonable precedent for what we can expect from the brand.
The Layla Aion has a pair of bass dials integrated in its cable for each of the Left/Right channels. You turn these dials to increase/decrease bass presence; I'm guessing these dials work via adjusting impedance accordingly. Pretty cool. But the maximum bass setting is not good at all. On this setting, the Layla Aion sounds overly bloated with the farty quality that characterizes BA drivers having been pushed past their limits. As a whole, the sound signature brings to mind the dreaded descriptor of "mud-fi". Best to lay off the bass; personally, I chose to set the dial to the 12 o'clock position. On this setting, the Layla Aion's bass just sounds like normal BA bass; it has no slam, no dynamics. Pretty inoffensive for what it's worth.
But the midrange of the Layla Aion is an affront to any self-respecting weeb listener. Actually, scratch that: any listener with normal hearing. The Layla Aion's pinna compensation is non-existent, falling outside the scope of any academic target curve. You have a minor bump at 1.3kHz and then an abrupt dip after, where most IEMs would be rising. This is followed by a baby hump at 3kHz which has no place being there. The Layla Aion effectively has no upper-midrange; female vocals sound incredibly suppressed and diffused. Male vocals sound slightly more correct, but that's not a high bar. This IEM is effectively limited to a very specific subset of music - dark, slow, male vocal tracks - to sound passable.
You'll notice I said "dark" tracks, so let's talk about the Layla Aion's treble. Our perception of the treble frequencies is partially baked into the balance struck with the bass frequencies. But feel free to dial back the bass all you want - to the bare minimum - because it doesn't change the Layla Aion fundamentally having almost zero treble extension. Subjectively, and on paper, the Layla Aion's treble rolls off even earlier than 10kHz. Maybe JH Audio was going all-in on a more relaxed tuning, I don't know. But it's not an excuse. The Layla Aion still sounds fatiguing (even if it doesn't hit me at first) because of how off the 7kHz peak is contrasted to the rest of the treble response. There's also, like, $25 IEMs with better treble extension than this.
If you're wondering about technicalities, they're not good. As in "not good to the point of which I normally don't take the time to talk about it" not good. But the Layla Aion isn't some random, sub-$100 IEM. It's a multi-kilobuck IEM with expectations. Notes are blunted from head-to-toe. Staging is slightly better than average, but individual instrument lines are smushed and nigh impossible to discern from one another. The Layla Aion sounds incredibly compressed and boring; perhaps this perception is partly baked into its lack of extension. No matter how you cut it, there's no way you'd know that this IEM has 12BAs. There are 1BA IEMs, such as the Etymotic ER3XR, that handily out-resolve the Layla Aion.
The JH Audio Layla Aion. A pretty IEM that doesn't sound so pretty in my opinion.
Score: 3/10
Sounds like JH Audio is one of those boutique IEM makers that thrive on selling fancy junk like oBravo.
Taking a look at Crinacle's tier list, almost every JH Audio IEM he has heard is C+ at best, with the Diana being so bad that it earned a spot on the coveted E ranking with the following comment: "Mushy transients and the detailing capability of free phone earbuds."
Taking a look at Crinacle's tier list, almost every JH Audio IEM he has heard is C+ at best, with the Diana being so bad that it earned a spot on the coveted E ranking with the following comment: "Mushy transients and the detailing capability of free phone earbuds."
I think the distinction would be that JH Audio has historical relevance. They were one of the first companies (the first?) to use multiple BAs in a CIEM. A lot of the big name artists use their IEMs; they're one of the biggest names in the professional world. Their Roxanne IEM is also decent according to Crin's list, sporting a solid A grade, so ostensibly they have made something good. I'm not sure if the same can be said for oBravo, although I'd like to hear one of their IEMs for fun still haha.
Please do Elysian X before the end of the month. I am a heavy lean toward this IEM.Hey all, my MEST MKII review has been published here.
Some other quick updates:
- I probably won't be dropping as many impressions or reviews in the coming weeks, as I'll be moving again for college. But feel free to continue asking questions
- The Symphonium Helios and the Elysian X (and likely the Elysian Terminator) are next after some headphones I have to review.
- Next "big" updates for the thread will likely revolve around impressions of CanJam SoCal which I will be attending with the rest of the Headphones.com crew.
- Vision Ears have received the second VE7 and they have confirmed that it was indeed defective. Hopefully a replacement is sent out soon.
I just want to know which one you think is better. X or Annihilator.
DrewVz
1000+ Head-Fier
That's a pretty savage takedown of the Aion. Looks like my wallet will be safe for a little longer at least. Thanks for bringing the truth to the masses, Precog.
@precog pulls no punches. If an IEM sucks, he let's you know it along with all of your friends, family, enemies, teachers, and business colleagues.
Thanks for the feedback on the JH set.
Haha one thing not mentioned is that some JH models use Bellsing drivers: https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/cxqlje/knowles_files_claim_with_us_trade_commission_to/
The Bellsings are generally cheaper than Knowles and Sonion drivers. Haha big can of worms to open up!!
Speaking about historical relevance for the professional world, stuff like westone and Shure really haven't innovated much. They seemed to have been overtaken by the CHIFI flood in recent years and yield a lower price to performance ratio than the cheaper CHIFI.
In fact some boutique brands seem to have run into trouble:
1) Audiofly - https://www.head-fi.org/threads/does-anyone-know-what-happened-to-audiofly.957528/
2) RHA - https://www.head-fi.org/threads/rha-audio-bankrupt.958966/
3) Sennheiser had to sell their consumer audio wing.
No doubt covid really did a number on a lot of businesses and stage gigs, audio is considered "discretionary spending" after all. It is sad to see some of these brands go, but at the end of the day,, it is kind of a survival of the fittest thing in this covid climate, and better competition and better price to performance ratio is always good for us consumers.
I remember I used to rock a RHA T20 / DX50 combo back in the day, good old memories.
Thank you. It's just one man's opinion at the end of the day, but it does make me happy to know that mine has some weight
Yeah, there's a big stigma against manufacturers using Bellsing drivers. The CCZ Plume recently got cancelled because it turned out their "custom" drivers were Bellsings. Technically they didn't lie, but the public perception of Bellsing's drivers was enough to force CCZ to discontinue the Plume.
My personal opinion, though, is that if a company can get results with Bellsing drivers equal to their Knowles/Sonion counterparts, then I don't have a problem with it. The defect rate of Bellsing's drivers is actually lower than Sonion's drivers from what I understand. They're also cheaper like you noted, so it's a logical business decision on some fronts. As long as a manufacture is being transparent, it's not a big deal to me. It's when manufacturers lie about where they're sourcing their drivers that I draw the line.
kmmbd
500+ Head-Fier
All of this is hearsay (but there was a thread on reddit about this if I'm not mistaken), but Bellsing drivers are apparently 1:1 clones of Knowles BA since one of the engineers (rumor has it) stole the blueprints for the entire catalogue and sold it off to Bellsing Inc. (which again is owned by some other parent company, a lot of chi-fi is actually owned by a single parent company believe it or not).
So in theory one should be able to extract the same performance outta Bellsing drivers as can be done from Knowles. Heck, Bellsing even improved upon some Knowles issues (has slightly lower harmonic distortion) in some of their models it seems (one of the reasons the Solaris used Bellsing). All of this is hearsay and nothing is truly documented anywhere because of the nature of their business (knock-off stuff after all) but the performance shouldn't be inferior.
The issue is that many fake Bellsing drivers exist and those sound terrible (the ones used in ultra budget chi-fi). Fake of fake. Fakeception. This caused a general stigma against Bellsing altogether (though one can argue that stealing IP is a crime in itself and should be boycotted).
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Agree with your points, though there was actually an official lawsuit that was conducted in the US: https://www.usitc.gov/secretary/fed_reg_notices/337/dn_3409_notice_08292019sgl.pdf
The lawsuit was opened in the august 2019 period and the judge officially ruled to support Knowles finally in the end June 2021 period: https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...s-in-Trade-Secret-Theft-Case-Against-Bellsing
So seems Bellsing lost the case. Knowles actually opened a few TOTL and branded IEMs specially to show that the insides were using Bellsings and used this to support their case. Supposedly, the judge ruled that audio gear can't bring Bellsing containing drivers into the US, but in practice how are the customs gonna check every IEM that comes in? Most audio gear are made in China BTW, and I suspect a lot of budget sets will use Bellsings.
I definitely agree with you and @Precogvision that sound is the most important. If for example the Campfire engineers can tune a Solaris to sound excellent with Bellsings, so be it, as long as there is no false advertisement involved. Campfire never said they were using Knowles drivers in the Solaris, but said on their spec sheet that it was using "custom balanced armatures". FWIW, I've heard some IEMs using supposedly gourmet ingredients like Knowles and Sonion driver or purported beryllium drivers that weren't that great sounding, so I guess tuning and implementation is of more importance than the driver type or brand or count.
The issue of these summitFI brands charging big money for using supposedly perceived less premium parts is another story though. But it is a business after all, and which business doesn't want to be profitable? Willing buyer, willing seller.
I think a second bigger issue is also the ethical component, that Bellsing infringed on copyrights/patents from Knowles. Actually, just 3 - 4 years back, a multi BA driver IEM would be costing anywhere from $300ish USD and a single BA set at around $100 USD. It is actually partially due to the rise of Bellsing that prices were depressed and consumers didn't need to sell a kidney to get some BA CHIFI IEMs, as the Bellsings were more commonly used in CHIFI instead of the more expensive Knowles drivers. At the end of the day, I think we consumers did benefit in a way from Bellsing actually, although piracy and patent infringements are not ethical.
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