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Aurorus Audio Borealis Headphone Review

Rate this headphone:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 29 17.1%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 95 55.9%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 40 23.5%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 6 3.5%

  • Total voters
    170

spartaman64

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Looks solid to me overall. But are these available again? I thought they were sold-out for years.

@staticV3
I didnt expect that the drivers were so cheap. It makes sense though as it is a very small company, so I dont think they are cashing on the buyers.
That said, it is kinda funny that Crinacle gave them an "A" in terms of technical performance, which is a very, very good rating in his system. Most other headphones with technical rating A cost over 1000 dollars MSRP. As you said the technical performance looks fine according to measurements, but it shows that his "technical" rankings probably are not too significant in reality. https://crinacle.com/rankings/headphones/
technical performance is separate to a degree from the tonal performance. if you only care for tonality you can disregard them
 
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Keened

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If they’re comfortable, looks are meaningless to me.
I will say this for them: they were exceedingly comfortable and the customizable suspension for the positioning and clamping force is something more manufactures should embrace.

But it should be noted that they only sounded 'right' to me if I used PulseAudio to EQ and had the Convolver, Bass Enhancer, and Crystalizer turned on (with the convolution and Crystalizer being required in general and the Bass Enhancer dependent on the source material)
 

KiyPhi

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Too much agricultural looks for my taste. High distortion and lack of bass maybe point to a poor choice of the wrong drivers. At the asking price it is a pass for me. Thank you Amir for shedding much needed light on these flawed and expensive products!
Bass response is most often a result of venting and sealing design choices for open back headphones. That is normally the case unless the driver is clipping at some level like Focal do.

Edit: actually that applies to IEMs and closed back as well but closed back had design considerations on the back volume that open backs often don't.
 

NDRQ

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An HD600 can do this so much better for so much cheaper. Not even mentioning the HD58X...or HD560S..
Cannot understand how is this recommended for 900 bucks...with this build quality, tons of distoprtion and rough frequency response.
 

Robbo99999

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Hmm, I had to go with the second to lowest vote option of "Not Terrible". The frequency response is fairly messed up above 3kHz and hard to correct using EQ if you want to get all areas close to the curve, and above 5kHz it's very messed up, can't really correct that. Plus there's all that distortion in the bass, whilst at the same time requiring a bass boost on top of that. Plus it's not exactly an inexpensive headphone, weighing in at $899! Literally is was only Amir's subjective opinion of the headphone once EQ'd along with his assessment of very good spatial abilities that made me not choose the lowest "Poor" vote option.
 

Robbo99999

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Thanks for the review, Amir!
There was a lot of controversy around the Borealis when it was launched, because it uses $10 drivers from Peerless (HPD-50N25PR00-32).
Good to see that this doesn't impede their performance too much. Yet another case of price ≠ performance.
(The price of the headphones themselves is another story though)
That is exceedingly interesting! Although it does seem to impede performance - the distortion results are bad really. (Also the frequency response is certainly messed up above 5kHz although that's probably not down to the driver itself.)
 

Robbo99999

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An HD600 can do this so much better for so much cheaper. Not even mentioning the HD58X...or HD560S..
Cannot understand how is this recommended for 900 bucks...with this build quality, tons of distoprtion and rough frequency response.
I think it's mostly down to the listening test - if it sounds really great after EQ for him then he probably has to recommend it. I can't place massive amounts of weight on that though, but it does make me sit up & think if there could be something about this headphone design that does something re the spatial qualities / soundstage that he mentioned. I voted this headphone low though.
 

ObjectiveSubjectivist

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Nope bone stock. Only changes made were to the points where the suspension is held in place where grommets were added since the screws would otherwise chew through the fabric while they swung.


They had a couple small drops over the last year or so, but yeah, not highly available.

The Crinicle ranking is what led me to looking towards them in the first place :(
Older versions has this thin strap. So why this one is different?

Kinda like mk2?
 

markanini

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At $900 you should expect better. The obvious flaw on the graph is the too low mid-bas relative to mids, It's going to thin voices. It's made worse by the elevation at 1Khz, which would make voices nasal. The small dip at 3kHz wouldn't concern me, a numer of tonally correct sounding headphones have that kind of deviation.
 
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spartaman64

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How is that now?
either it's separate from the frequency response or we don't understand FR well enough to determine technicalities from it, or our measurement rigs are not accurate enough. Either way, the result is the same. we cannot judge technicalities from the FR alone.
 

Keened

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Older versions has this thin strap. So why this one is different?

Kinda like mk2?
I think so, there was never an official name change, but the discord channel had people talking about their earlier models and the problems therein. This one was from a run where those issues were fixed and the overall weight was reduced, so a point revision at the very least.
 

wwenze

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This guy takes the term "open back" to a new level
 

phoenixdogfan

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It's $900 and kinda looks like a Radio Shack offering. For only $100 more the Focal Celestee, looks a lot better, has an established company behind it, and a comparable performance envelope. If I were looking for a market comparable to this, I'd opt for the Celestee.
 

markanini

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either it's separate from the frequency response or we don't understand FR well enough to determine technicalities from it, or our measurement rigs are not accurate enough. Either way, the result is the same. we cannot judge technicalities from the FR alone.
Meethinks If technicalities were important to a majority of listeners, even at expense of tonality, it would have been reflected by Harman research. Also, why would you expect every recording to wow you like that?
 

spartaman64

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Meethinks If technicalities were important to a majority of listeners, even at expense of tonality, it would have been reflected by Harman research. Also, why would you expect every recording to wow you like that?
its not which is why i prefaced my earlier comment with if you dont care about techs then you can ignore the techs rating. also since getting "higher end" headphones i definitely enjoy some recordings less than others
 

beefkabob

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either it's separate from the frequency response or we don't understand FR well enough to determine technicalities from it, or our measurement rigs are not accurate enough. Either way, the result is the same. we cannot judge technicalities from the FR alone.
What exactly is tonality then?
 

Keened

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How is that now?
One of the big selling points with this headphone in particular, but also from what I gather is a shared opinion among the headphone community, is the 'impulse' generation with bass/mid-bass. The sensation of 'slam' as it were. DCA mentions this in one of their lectures as to why they deliberately deviate from the curve at the 250hz region, since in room you get tactile reinforcement that is otherwise is missing from a pure frequency compliant curve in headphones.

The relative importance, or the design choices required to generate this at the expense of frequency response, is of course still open for debate and iteration.
 

ObjectiveSubjectivist

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I think so, there was never an official name change, but the discord channel had people talking about their earlier models and the problems therein. This one was from a run where those issues were fixed and the overall weight was reduced, so a point revision at the very least.
Oh ok thanks for the info.
 
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