kramer5150
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2004
- Posts
- 14,427
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- 209
Hi HF'ers... Its been a while since I regularly posted here. I'm pretty much in lurk mode, although I still completely enjoy music listening almost every day. So when Jays reached out to me for some assistance reviewing their newly released Q-Jays version II, I happily accepted the opportunity.
So lets boogie...
Sonically these are fairly neutral sounding to my ears, with a slight tip of the curve towards the treble, very good deep bass extension. I don't really detect much by way of highly "colored" boosted or attenuated frequency bands. Compared to the other cans in my profile The HD650 is the closest thing, but the little Q-Jays have a little more going on at the far ends of the spectrum. With more treble sparkle / edge and a little more deep sub bass extension. If you find Grados and AKG K7xx upper midrange bright and edgy, this version of Q-Jays might appeal. The Q-jays just don't have the upper midrange edginess, harmonic energy of these full size cans... which of course may or may not appeal depending on ones preferences.
BASS:
Bass extends deep and I think is more the "airy" and articulate kind of bass... as opposed to the heavy, weighty and thumpy kind. Q-Jays II bass is very much like my K701, but with more deep extension. One of my long time reference recordings for bass resolution is Brian Setzer Orchestra Live in Tokyo DVD. Its a VERY busy instrumental production, and underneath it all are some very airy, resonant and reverberant acoustic bass lines throughout. Its as much stage/venue acoustics as it is the fundamental tones from fingers scraping, plucking and slapping the strings. q-Jays II bass just has a natural flowing quality... but doesn't have the impact as my Grado phones and the HD650 I have come to enjoy in my profile. So things like kick drums don't quote have that mallet thump on the skin characteristic that defines the Grado slam. With that said the Q-Jays II is not a bass-head IEM. Its more about accuracy and resolution. Some might find the bass dry and boring.
MIDRANGE:
Midrange tonality is very much like my HD650. Smooth overall. Present yet not forward, shouty or edgy. Just like the HD650, solo instrumentation guitars, horns can seem a bit farther away at times. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, it gives them a sense of distance and soundstage image which is generally something IEMs can't do as well as full size cans. There have been several times in live concert recordings I had to take them off because I thought I heard a sound/noise coming from somewhere else in the house. Thats a first for me with an IEM. I usually get that sensation once in a while with my K701... but never with an IEM.
Midrange tones are every bit as detail and texture revealing as my best dynamic cans... RS1 and K701. Yet as I mentioned earlier the Q-Jays II lacks the harmonic edginess of either of those cans. One of my all time fave recordings for midrange tones is Jethro Tull Live at Montreaux. Ian Andersons flute playing is unlike anything I have ever heard. He has a way of blowing, grunting and percussively "fluttering" into the instrument. He creates all these harmonic distortions surrounding the fundamental tones that I think only the very best headphones can reveal. The Q_JaysII handled it all like a champ, very very natural sounding with little accentuation or coloration thrown on top. They're about as detailed as my K701... yet without that weird synthetic/plastic-ey tonality that at times I don't like about the AKG. With bland, poor and electronic synth recordings midrange can sound a bit dry... and even boring.
TREBLE:
Treble is light airy, articulate, delicate. Highly detail resolving too, without being excessively boosted (IMHO) over the upper mids. Poor / sibilant recordings however will tend to sound a little edgy, so you'll have to watch out for that. I am highly treble sensitive, where boosted treble triggers my tinnitus. So phones like the Beyer DT880 and some MB Quart phones are unlistenable for me. I am happy to report I remain tinnitus-free from my stint with the Q-Jays II. Once again I think there are some smoothness similarities here to my HD650, but boosted by about a good ~3 dbs.
IMAGE and SOUNDSTAGE:
Lets level-set this right off the bat... No IEM can image and punt sound out there like the best imaging full size headphones. Just like no headphone can space out sound like a 2CH speaker array (despite what John Grado believes), and no 2 CH speaker setup can image like live musicians playing in-person. That being said... the QJ II projects an image and soundstage very well. It just sounds "real". Room acoustics reverberate and resonate very naturally. Drum and cymbal attack is crisp and sharp, and you can really get a sense of distance and natural venue acoustic reverberation as the notes decay across the stage and through the venue. If the recording calls for it you will be rewarded. Ambiently "flat" recordings sound very flat, distant and spatially un-involving. My all time fave recording for imaging and soundstage is DreamTheater to Live Forever Live in Tokyo DVD. Where the Q-Jays II very nicely conveys a cavernous sense of space and ambience around Portnoys drums and Petruccis guitar lines. This is also a good sibilance test. James Labrie can exaggerate "SSSS" sounds a lot.
DURABILITY and ERGOs:
Durability is outstanding. Over the past several weeks I have used them and abused them more than any normally-sane audiophile would, given their price point. They come with a small hardshell plastic carry case... which I only used a couple times. Instead I just hap-hazardly wadded them up and stashed them in a side pocket in my backpack. This is how I pack-carried them to and from work 3-4 days a week and weekends, where they served dual role for conference calls and music listening. I am happy to report they have held up excellent over the weeks, where they got dusty/dirty, crushed and crunched. I am not exactly careful with my backpack, as it gets tossed around when I am in a hurry. Not a scratch, not a single cosmetic blemish.
In addition to the daily abuse, they got no rest at home either. One of my durability tests is to fall asleep with them at night... listening to quiet music, or falling asleep to a movie. Over the past month, I have fallen asleep on them at least a couple dozen times. Where I wake up the next day and the cables are all wadded and tangled up, in a jumbled mess under my back and sides as I rolled and tossed around on top of them through the night. I've had no problems with the cables, connectors or strain relief over the weeks under such abuse. I think the cables are a type of reinforced silicone material, it has that grippy/sticky kind of feel as opposed to slick and waxy. I have very high expectations for this type of cable material, it has been impervious to dry-rotting, and turning brittle with the other Jays monitors I have field tested.
They come with a full set of silicone tips and a pair nicely done comply tips that you have to pinch / roll / insert. I had no problems with the medium-large tips or comply tips getting a proper seal. The comply tips are my favs though. They isolate a little better than the silicone ones, and I find them very comfy. Sometimes I don't even pinch and roll them, I just shoved them into my ears. The body and housing is small enough to just disappear in the ear. I was able to lie down on my side with them inserted into my ears with very little discomfort... comfy enough to fall asleep with. I can't say that about very many in-ears I have tried.
Unlike any other headphone or IEM I have seen... the Q-Jays II acoustic housing and sound tube are metal injection molded. The parts are formed from a high temperature mold cavity where molten metal flows into the tool and allowed to cool. I am not sure but I think the black coloring is a type of powder coat finish thats very hard, durable and has been impervious to scratches and cosmetic blemishes. It feels a lot like a DuraCoat finish that they use on firearms and weapon mount systems. It really feels like these will hold up for years and years to come.
PHWEW!!!... I'm wiped out!! I will post pics later. For now I'l just leave you all with some of the reference material I use for evaluation (I use the actual DVDs of course!!).
So lets boogie...
Sonically these are fairly neutral sounding to my ears, with a slight tip of the curve towards the treble, very good deep bass extension. I don't really detect much by way of highly "colored" boosted or attenuated frequency bands. Compared to the other cans in my profile The HD650 is the closest thing, but the little Q-Jays have a little more going on at the far ends of the spectrum. With more treble sparkle / edge and a little more deep sub bass extension. If you find Grados and AKG K7xx upper midrange bright and edgy, this version of Q-Jays might appeal. The Q-jays just don't have the upper midrange edginess, harmonic energy of these full size cans... which of course may or may not appeal depending on ones preferences.
BASS:
Bass extends deep and I think is more the "airy" and articulate kind of bass... as opposed to the heavy, weighty and thumpy kind. Q-Jays II bass is very much like my K701, but with more deep extension. One of my long time reference recordings for bass resolution is Brian Setzer Orchestra Live in Tokyo DVD. Its a VERY busy instrumental production, and underneath it all are some very airy, resonant and reverberant acoustic bass lines throughout. Its as much stage/venue acoustics as it is the fundamental tones from fingers scraping, plucking and slapping the strings. q-Jays II bass just has a natural flowing quality... but doesn't have the impact as my Grado phones and the HD650 I have come to enjoy in my profile. So things like kick drums don't quote have that mallet thump on the skin characteristic that defines the Grado slam. With that said the Q-Jays II is not a bass-head IEM. Its more about accuracy and resolution. Some might find the bass dry and boring.
MIDRANGE:
Midrange tonality is very much like my HD650. Smooth overall. Present yet not forward, shouty or edgy. Just like the HD650, solo instrumentation guitars, horns can seem a bit farther away at times. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, it gives them a sense of distance and soundstage image which is generally something IEMs can't do as well as full size cans. There have been several times in live concert recordings I had to take them off because I thought I heard a sound/noise coming from somewhere else in the house. Thats a first for me with an IEM. I usually get that sensation once in a while with my K701... but never with an IEM.
Midrange tones are every bit as detail and texture revealing as my best dynamic cans... RS1 and K701. Yet as I mentioned earlier the Q-Jays II lacks the harmonic edginess of either of those cans. One of my all time fave recordings for midrange tones is Jethro Tull Live at Montreaux. Ian Andersons flute playing is unlike anything I have ever heard. He has a way of blowing, grunting and percussively "fluttering" into the instrument. He creates all these harmonic distortions surrounding the fundamental tones that I think only the very best headphones can reveal. The Q_JaysII handled it all like a champ, very very natural sounding with little accentuation or coloration thrown on top. They're about as detailed as my K701... yet without that weird synthetic/plastic-ey tonality that at times I don't like about the AKG. With bland, poor and electronic synth recordings midrange can sound a bit dry... and even boring.
TREBLE:
Treble is light airy, articulate, delicate. Highly detail resolving too, without being excessively boosted (IMHO) over the upper mids. Poor / sibilant recordings however will tend to sound a little edgy, so you'll have to watch out for that. I am highly treble sensitive, where boosted treble triggers my tinnitus. So phones like the Beyer DT880 and some MB Quart phones are unlistenable for me. I am happy to report I remain tinnitus-free from my stint with the Q-Jays II. Once again I think there are some smoothness similarities here to my HD650, but boosted by about a good ~3 dbs.
IMAGE and SOUNDSTAGE:
Lets level-set this right off the bat... No IEM can image and punt sound out there like the best imaging full size headphones. Just like no headphone can space out sound like a 2CH speaker array (despite what John Grado believes), and no 2 CH speaker setup can image like live musicians playing in-person. That being said... the QJ II projects an image and soundstage very well. It just sounds "real". Room acoustics reverberate and resonate very naturally. Drum and cymbal attack is crisp and sharp, and you can really get a sense of distance and natural venue acoustic reverberation as the notes decay across the stage and through the venue. If the recording calls for it you will be rewarded. Ambiently "flat" recordings sound very flat, distant and spatially un-involving. My all time fave recording for imaging and soundstage is DreamTheater to Live Forever Live in Tokyo DVD. Where the Q-Jays II very nicely conveys a cavernous sense of space and ambience around Portnoys drums and Petruccis guitar lines. This is also a good sibilance test. James Labrie can exaggerate "SSSS" sounds a lot.
DURABILITY and ERGOs:
Durability is outstanding. Over the past several weeks I have used them and abused them more than any normally-sane audiophile would, given their price point. They come with a small hardshell plastic carry case... which I only used a couple times. Instead I just hap-hazardly wadded them up and stashed them in a side pocket in my backpack. This is how I pack-carried them to and from work 3-4 days a week and weekends, where they served dual role for conference calls and music listening. I am happy to report they have held up excellent over the weeks, where they got dusty/dirty, crushed and crunched. I am not exactly careful with my backpack, as it gets tossed around when I am in a hurry. Not a scratch, not a single cosmetic blemish.
In addition to the daily abuse, they got no rest at home either. One of my durability tests is to fall asleep with them at night... listening to quiet music, or falling asleep to a movie. Over the past month, I have fallen asleep on them at least a couple dozen times. Where I wake up the next day and the cables are all wadded and tangled up, in a jumbled mess under my back and sides as I rolled and tossed around on top of them through the night. I've had no problems with the cables, connectors or strain relief over the weeks under such abuse. I think the cables are a type of reinforced silicone material, it has that grippy/sticky kind of feel as opposed to slick and waxy. I have very high expectations for this type of cable material, it has been impervious to dry-rotting, and turning brittle with the other Jays monitors I have field tested.
They come with a full set of silicone tips and a pair nicely done comply tips that you have to pinch / roll / insert. I had no problems with the medium-large tips or comply tips getting a proper seal. The comply tips are my favs though. They isolate a little better than the silicone ones, and I find them very comfy. Sometimes I don't even pinch and roll them, I just shoved them into my ears. The body and housing is small enough to just disappear in the ear. I was able to lie down on my side with them inserted into my ears with very little discomfort... comfy enough to fall asleep with. I can't say that about very many in-ears I have tried.
Unlike any other headphone or IEM I have seen... the Q-Jays II acoustic housing and sound tube are metal injection molded. The parts are formed from a high temperature mold cavity where molten metal flows into the tool and allowed to cool. I am not sure but I think the black coloring is a type of powder coat finish thats very hard, durable and has been impervious to scratches and cosmetic blemishes. It feels a lot like a DuraCoat finish that they use on firearms and weapon mount systems. It really feels like these will hold up for years and years to come.
PHWEW!!!... I'm wiped out!! I will post pics later. For now I'l just leave you all with some of the reference material I use for evaluation (I use the actual DVDs of course!!).
