Aurorus Audio Borealis Headphone Review

[GaryH]

Axel seems to corelate good open sound with bigger drivers also

Source?

 

[IAtaman]

Source?

In the video previously shared, he talks about larger drivers, ring radiator etc. between 10:00 - 13:00

 

[GaryH]

He makes no mention of soundstage in relation to larger drivers.

 

[Leiker535]

Which premium mfr does use drivers higher than 10$????

If premium you can go by artesenal, most of them, specially if you add in R&D in the driver pricing (end value is not only the cost of parts). I may not agree with ZMF or even DCA pricing, but I wouldn't say they could be less than half they charge either.

It's what makes headphones like the Verum One ($300 MRSP) so astonishing.

 

[Yasuo]

It's a shame, it has the looks but for that money the performance is very poor.

 

[ObjectiveSubjectivist]

Source?

I'll try to find that and post you a link. But try to find it yourself.

 

[GaryH]

This is a science forum, you should back up your own claims with evidence yourself, not expect others to do that for you.

 

[nyxnyxnyx]

why does it matter if the driver itself is $10 or $100? We already know that diminishing return is a thing, so does having a $500 driver in a $900 headphones make it better for you? even if the sound quality is underwhelming?

 

[Robbo99999]

why does it matter if the driver itself is $10 or $100? We already know that diminishing return is a thing, so does having a $500 driver in a $900 headphones make it better for you? even if the sound quality is underwhelming?

The driver is not performing particularly well, the distortion in the bass, so they probably could have done with allowing themselves to spend more on the driver to get one with lower distortion.

 

[nyxnyxnyx]

The driver is not performing particularly well, the distortion in the bass, so they probably could have done with allowing themselves to spend more on the driver to get one with lower distortion.

I get what you mean. I guess I was trying to ask that, if the driver is performing well enough then people wouldn't care how cheap or expensive it is right?

By the way, do you know what are currently the best performing headphones drivers in the market? been a while since I did some digging.

 

[Keened]

why does it matter if the driver itself is $10 or $100? We already know that diminishing return is a thing, so does having a $500 driver in a $900 headphones make it better for you? even if the sound quality is underwhelming?

It's a mix of value proposition arguments and ethical business practices.

The idea is that for ~$1K you can get a bunch of different headphones so a particularly low Bill of Materials strikes people as being borderline poor practice if it isn't matching or exceeding its competitors. In other situations where the frequency response is significantly worse then its competitors people sometimes even feel it's borderline fraudulent (see: GR research, most $1K+ DACs over the last 30 years, etc). If you have the skill to create a product and sell it at a premium, there is an implicit obligation to provide the buyer their 'money's worth' since they are purchasing it (presumably) on the promise of the craftsman's skill. The more the BoM contributes to the bottom line, the less the relative skill of the builder is ethically weighted. Another variable is of course aesthetics, where paying a premium for audio jewelry/ornamentation is acceptable to differing degrees.

"If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy." -Red-Green

A lot of hackles are raised with this model in particular because of the industrial minimalism in the aesthetics and (on other forums) the assertion that it can be 3D printed for a fraction of the cost. Which isn't wrong per se, but not entirely truthful since this is made with an injection mold and you'd have some trouble sourcing things like the rods since the commonly available ones had mechanical property issues so they replaced them with B2B parts. That said, there have been plenty of successful clones, some of which may exceed the performance of this one.

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.

I considered Focal and after doing some research rejected them for any future purchases. At their price they should provide significantly better customer service and their headphones are far too fragile with a tendency to self-destruct. Cost and performance aside, Aurorus Audio is almost the complete opposite, the customer service in providing parts, iterative upgrades to previous owners, and repairing have been nothing but excellent from what I've seen.

I don't want to pay $900 for comfort and "correctable" sound, but I like the idea of an "open" large sound. Where to look for great sound out of the box, light weight, open back, irrespective of driver type, that provides value for $$$?

If you find something let me know

The problem of reflections and standing waves interacting with the driver/ear in open back headphone has only been solved by one manufacturer AFAIK: DCA Expanse. One of the ideas of this model was to sidestep the problem by minimizing reflection points and air impedance. There are plenty of planer headphones which offer open/large sound and have large pads, but they tend to have subpar fit on the head, and they almost all have questionable QC track records. There are other open back dynamic drivers, but they all require EQ from what I've seen to be considered true competitors and they tend to be heavy. Best value as of this very moment is probably a used HD800 with EQ since they seem to be trending down towards ~$500 these days.

 

[Robbo99999]

I get what you mean. I guess I was trying to ask that, if the driver is performing well enough then people wouldn't care how cheap or expensive it is right?

By the way, do you know what are currently the best performing headphones drivers in the market? been a while since I did some digging.

That's right, people shouldn't really care about how much the driver costs (apart from it's knock on effect to the overall price of the headphone), but they should care about how it measures....and this one in this headphone could definitely be better from a distortion point of view, so I think they should have paid more attention to sourcing a driver with better distortion behaviour. I can't answer your question about which are the best performing drivers in the market nowadays, because I have no idea, lol! Although it's not just the driver itself that determines the distortion behaviour, I think it can also be affected by the surrounding headphone design.....so it's not just about sourcing the best drivers, it's also about how it's integrated into the headphone.....but again I don't really know the specifics of how that is done.

 

[jae]

I remember a recent discussion of the supposedly superior "slam" of the Focal Utopia and how any citizism of this concept was being treated in this thread....

How people describe "slam" is usually characterised by higher energy from about 60-200 hz (maybe a little higher or lower depending on who you ask), relative primarily to other midrange frequencies and their harmonics. This is the fundamental frequency range for most basic percussion including kick drum, snare, toms- but also large portion of the bass range and vocals. How slammy/punchy something sounds by default will primarily always depend on the spectral content of music and how it is recorded/mixed/mastered in the first place. High energy in that region is not without trade offs- loss of soundstage depth/imaging, less intelligibility of vocals, "muddiness" and throwing off the balance of a mix are all potential consequences depending on where and how much excess energy there is.

 

[zachary80]

This is a review, listening tests and detailed measurements of the Aurorus Audio Borealis open-back headphone. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $899.

View attachment 263259
As the British say, the headphone looks a bit "agricultural" with what looks like stamped washer and twisted wire in the driver region. That aside, the headphone wears very comfortably with very large and plush ear cups. Let's see how it performs.

Aurorus Audio Borealis Measurements
Let's start with our frequency response measurements which have been slightly tweaked to have more resolution and extension down to 10 Hz:
View attachment 263260

Focusing on the positive, as noted, we have good compliance from upper bass to lower treble. But clearly we are drooping in bass and have some resonances in high frequencies. As a relative "error" response we have:
View attachment 263261

Shouldn't be too hard to develop EQ for it (see next section). Unfortunately distortion peaks in lower frequencies which may limit our options to boost that region as desired:
View attachment 263262

View attachment 263263

Group delay is messy in mid frequencies as many headphones are:
View attachment 263264

Impedance is low and variable so be careful with tube amps and such:
View attachment 263265

Good news is that sensitivity is well above average:

View attachment 263266

Combined with lowish impedance, most sources should be able to drive it.

Aurorus Audio Borealis Headphone Listening Tests
As the frequency response measurements would predict, first impression is decent. You could listen to it this way and not know the joys that some EQ brings:
View attachment 263267

With this in place, the response was massively transformed. Together with excellent spatial qualities, the experience was joyful. Turning off the EQ quickly showed the large improvement you were getting not only in tonality but loss of distortion in female vocals. Guessing, that reduction with filter 4 was responsible. As usual, you want to adjust the bass to taste.

Conclusions
The Borealis design could have been better in delivering more bass with less distortion and reduction of some resonances. Fortunately most of it is repairable with EQ. Once there, the large cups bring both comfort and great spatial qualities that are rather addictive. Add to it the high sensitivity and you get a good offering with equalization.

I am going to recommend the Aurorus Audio Borealis headphone with equalization.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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I apologize if this has already been discussed and I missed it, but would it be possible to at least spot measure some of these headphones once EQ is applied? I definitely have seen different results for different headphones but its hard to say if that is true across dynamic/planar/estat