Jerry Harvey (JH) Custom IEM Review

[diddley]

The true reason why the band desolved

 

[LIΟN]

It's a stage monitor, most likely tuned to highlight the musicians instrument. Usual monitoring is you, click track and a tiny bit of the band.

Universial iem's FR, which is said to be used a lot for stage monitoring. (meassurement from Crinacale page)
Hmm...

 

[solderdude]

so why is there still a significant 7-8k peak? it's not like that's a crucial area to monitor during a live performance and if you raise levels overall enough it will start becoming an issue. It's still there on measurements from other couplers, just shifted, so it doesn't seem to be measurement artifact.
if not for that you might have an excuse that it's an "intentional" tuning but as is I'm calling bs. Yeah, maybe it's well made, yeah, it's not like you need harman bass for the intended purpose, but there's no excusing that poor channel matching and treble rollercoaster at anywhere near that price.

7-8kHz is seen in a lot (if not most) headphones. That is a band you cannot filter/tune passively very easy without affecting upper treble.
7-8kHz is just between sibilance and sharpness and while it appears to be a peak it is at the correct level opposite the mids so not 'sharp' sounding but could bring some 'details'. Certainly when considering the lower treble dip. Without the level being 'correct' above 7kHz (acc. to Harman) this might be a muffled sounding earphone.
I don't think 7-20kHz at the 'correct' level is such a big issue.

there's no excusing that poor channel matching

Below 100Hz the differences can be (and most likely are) seal related. They are CIEMS afterall and the owners ear canal may well be somewhat close to that of Amirs fixture but may have some leakage.
From 100Hz to 8kHz the channel matching is at least decent aside from the 3kHz range which happens to be insertion depth dependent (ear canal) dependent so that area must be taken with a grain of salt anyway.
From 100Hz to 2kHz the channel matching is excellent and better than most headphones b.t.w. and this is the most important range for say... a singer.
Above 8kHz the measurements are indicative at best and one can't say anything about channel matching from that point. Certainly not when 4 drivers are being used for the treble.

Distortion is very low, sensitivity extremely high (131dBV !) so ideal for loud monitoring from small portable low power transceivers.

Is it quite expensive ... sure but ... most CIEMs cost between $1.5k and $ 3k so that's what you can expect anyway, cheapies can be found around $ 1k.
Should one buy it for music enjoyment ? I would not recommend it.
It does not adhere to Harman for sure but not all monitors do.

It isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Sure poor VFM when expecting a 'neutral' CIEM... and yes there are better ones for less money as well.

 

[Matias]

Crazy to think a 20usd IEM like 7Hz Zero 2 is better in every sense.

7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2 IEM Review

This is a review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of the 7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2 IEM. It was kindly donated to me by a member and costs US $24.99. The cable is soft and longer than typical which I like. They take fair amount of effort to push it but then they make a reassuring...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[solderdude]

One can buy a 100 of those but they may not be equally well suited as a stage monitor when running and jumping around on a stage hoping they don't fall out by accident.
CIEM's usually have a better fit (and comfort) than non custom IEMs.

When you want to enjoy music (on the go) these cheap IEMs are the way to go (if you don't mind things in your ear canal)

Besides... it is the same argument as comparing a DCA Stealth with a 'similar measured tonality' cheap IEM.

 

[Jimbob54]

Isn't it Jerry Harvey Audio, not Henry, although these Roxanne look different?

I think Amir put up his red light and impaired his vision ;-)

 

[Robbo99999]

7-8kHz is seen in a lot (if not most) headphones. That is a band you cannot filter/tune passively very easy without affecting upper treble.
7-8kHz is just between sibilance and sharpness and while it appears to be a peak it is at the correct level opposite the mids so not 'sharp' sounding but could bring some 'details'. Certainly when considering the lower treble dip. Without the level being 'correct' above 7kHz (acc. to Harman) this might be a muffled sounding earphone.
I don't think 7-20kHz at the 'correct' level is such a big issue.


Below 100Hz the differences can be (and most likely are) seal related. They are CIEMS afterall and the owners ear canal may well be somewhat close to that of Amirs fixture but may have some leakage.
From 100Hz to 8kHz the channel matching is at least decent aside from the 3kHz range which happens to be insertion depth dependent (ear canal) dependent so that area must be taken with a grain of salt anyway.
From 100Hz to 2kHz the channel matching is excellent and better than most headphones b.t.w. and this is the most important range for say... a singer.
Above 8kHz the measurements are indicative at best and one can't say anything about channel matching from that point. Certainly not when 4 drivers are being used for the treble.

Distortion is very low, sensitivity very high so ideal for loud monitoring from small portable low power transceivers.

Is it quite expensive ... sure but ... most CIEMs cost between $1.5k and $ 3k so that's what you can expect anyway, cheapies can be found around $ 1k.
Should one buy it for music enjoyment ? I would not recommend it.
It does not adhere to Harman for sure but not all monitors do.

It isn't as bad as you make it out to be. Sure poor VFM when expecting a 'neutral' CIEM... and yes there are better ones for less money as well.

Just a point on the channel matching - Amir was only able to get the channels to match as well as they do in his published measurement by using his measurement rig to tweak the trim controls for each channel; Amir noted that when positioning both trim controls centrally that the IEM was unbalanced - he used his rig to balance it, therefore people without a measurement rig (everyone really) will not be able to get a good channel matching with this IEM because the trim controls are unreliable.

 

[restorer-john]

Not sure harman was a thing at the time of release.

It still isn't.

 

[Robbo99999]

It still isn't.

Haha, don't be starting that! It's a thing on our website here though & with other reviewers and places like Oratory's EQ on reddit along with spreading it through Jaako's AutoEQ, etc, and I think there are a few more headphone manufacturers that have started to target Harman somewhat closer in recent years. Either way, there's a lot of us that know that Harman Curve headphones sound good through use of EQ, and we're also aware of the research behind it. Hell, even the venerable HD600 that was made in the 1990's has a lot of similarities with the Harman Curve (even though the Harman Curve came later of course), and that was a very well regarded headphone.

 

[solderdude]

The new FAD is tilted DF.... lately...

 

[restorer-john]

Haha, don't be starting that! It's a thing on our website here though & with other reviewers and places like Oratory's EQ on reddit along with spreading it through Jaako's AutoEQ, etc, and I think there are a few more headphone manufacturers that have started to target Harman somewhat closer in recent years. Either way, there's a lot of us that know that Harman Curve headphones sound good through use of EQ, and we're also aware of the research behind it. Hell, even the venerable HD600 that was made in the 1990's has a lot of similarities with the Harman Curve (even though the Harman Curve came later of course), and that was a very well regarded headphone.

It's the circle of absolute confusion MkII. Think about it.

 

[Robbo99999]

The new FAD is tilted DF.... lately...

Ha, yes!

 

[Robbo99999]

It's the circle of absolute confusion MkII. Think about it.

It reminds me more of chicken & egg analogy, but Harman's baseline work that was the birth of the Harman Curve didn't have any input from HD600.....but it does go to show why & how the HD600 was so well esteemed, it got a lot of it's parts right in that frequency response.

 

[Limopard]

I think Amir put up his red light and impaired his vision ;-)

He doesn't have to wear that dress tonight.

 

[brandall10]

Wow... had one of these from the time of their release, I guess circa 2012 or so? Probably one of the first few dozen to receive them as I had them on preorder for months.

As this was my first (and only) custom, I was very sideways about the sound which I thought was too mid focused. Nice to see this confirmed. Still, trucked through it to use them for a few years, maybe 1000 hours or so, until the right unit died. Sunk cost and all...

 

[brandall10]

As @solderdude mentioned, these are intended to be used for live performers on stage. Live performance venues are incredibly loud and usually very reverberant, and so the stage monitors are tuned differently for that very specific use case. You can see this similar tuning philosophy carried over across many different companies that consider live musicians their primary target audience---Ultimate Ears, Westone, JH, Shure, and many 64Audio and Empire Ears custom fitted offerings. They are objectively "wonky" in terms of what we know about how hearing and preferences work in ideal or even good listening conditions, but these are an extreme case and the tool required is highly specialized.

The price, of course, is another conversation and imo has to do much more with the fact that this space is sort of an oligopoly. Think streaming services and airlines.

Eh, I was one of the first owners of these and had many discussions with people from the company prior to getting a pair. They were hawked very hard on Head-fi as the utmost in fidelity for hifi usage at home, one of the first to really push the number of drivers up for the sake of fidelity. They were a polarizing listen compared to something like the JH13 which was almost universally lauded. I recall some theorized squeezing this many drivers into such a small space may have made tuning more difficult... so while the FR took a step back, it created a wider soundstage and that was cool. Or something.

In fact all of these companies (side-note: UA was Jerry Harvey's original company he sold to Logitech) are/were very locked into that community and made no distinction about use case between stage and hifi usage in particular products, but being used for stage was a marketing push to the home listener as proof of 'pro audio' excellence, as a monitor both on stage and in the studio. They probably made the bulk of their money from head-fi, at least for their upper tier models which clearly could sell in the thousands to members there. All, except maybe Westone, had big presence at local shows and big booths at CanJam.

So I call foul on this notion. They're simply tuned by 'golden ears' and this is the result.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Since it's a CIEM, it should obviously fit the owner perfectly. And note there's no need for tips at all. So no tip rolling. They appear to have too little bass, and while I don't think full on Harmon pinna gain is an optimal solution, this model simply takes out too much which will put the vocals way back in the mix. Like the OG LCD X, it could still be very usable as a monitor despite the missing gain provided the user knows how to work around that, but will require quite a bit of EQ to sound realistic for almost everyone else.

Price is typical of CIEMs, and probably fair, given each set of these has a production run of one to amortize any batch specific costs to manufacture,

Thank you, Amir, for the very fine review.

 

[anphex]

Were those made before the harman curve? If you assum they aimed for studio linearity, they would be pretty nice. 10-20 years ago these would have been insane specs. Considering the distortion, you could still make a pretty decent harman curve.

 

[alekksander]

very interesting project, but price…man, it's ridiculous to say least

 

[Geert]

it could still be very usable as a monitor despite the missing gain provided the user knows how to work around that

Stage monitoring has been part of my job for decades. Lots of artist use off the shelf IEM's like Shures. These IEM's don't have have some magic frequency curve that makes them more suitable for monitoring. In my digital mixing console I have EQ-presets for different IEM's and floor monitors (wedges). The target for these preset is 'high fidelity', comperable to what you target at home (just a bit more neutral and without bass boost). They are based of measurements and/or listening to music samples. On a big stage you can have a combination of different IEM's and stage monitors, and as a monitor mixer you need to be able to evaluate the sound of all of them in real time while you might not even have a copy of the IEM the artist is using. Not the time and place for 'circle of confusion' discussions, so these presets are a lifesaver.

While mixing monitors you also target high fidelity and not some deviating target that sounds crap to you but is supposed to work miracles on stage. (What is required is to take spillover of the FOH system and other instruments into account so the artist can clearly hear whats needed to perform optimally).

Example response of a budget single driver IEM you might use on stage, the Shure SE215:

(https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/shure/se215#test_377).

The SE425 has 2 drivers, thanks to the tweeter no dip in the highs but is twice the cost.