Jerry Harvey (JH) Custom IEM Review

[ThatSoundsGood]

Is the FR target even relevant here? I rated it “poor” based on FR, but it may be the best tool for the job…

Besides the fit, is the FR also a “custom-target”?

You're onto something. The fit is more important than the frequency response because the fit will seal out external noise (like an earplug) and allow for more accurate monitoring. The mixing console has input and output EQ so the frequency response is easily changed.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Monitoring instruments/voices during live performances ≠ hifi music enjoyment nor creating a final mix.

Bass on a podium is 'felt' and is not attenuated as much as mids and treble and given the present SPL during a performance one does not want boosted lows anyway (equal loudness contours) as it will muddy that what they want monitored.
One also does not want to hear 'harsh, shrill or sibilance' at higher SPL either (at high volumes) so a bit less 'clarity' is not a bad thing either.
Granted this appears to be a bit too much of a good thing, perhaps, but when the user is used to the presentation he also knows how that will turn out it may well be fine for monitoring.

These are not intended for enjoying, listening to music but a tool for a performer. A bit like the NS10 being a tool for sound engineers. It serves a purpose.
It think it is important to emphasize that.
CIEM's are important (and the word custom means expensive) tools for musicians.

Well said. The intent is not a flat frequency response. The intent is to help performers hear what they need in a room with a massive PA system blasting their music. This is a different tool and it is widely regarded as one of the best ever made.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

View attachment 391569
View attachment 391570

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

Professional musicians rarely use these because they don't have a proper seal to get rid of outside noise. That's the point of custom in-ears. The seal is 75% of the battle here.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Musician, worked in live, playd with IEM's, did monitors mixes. You guys are off that poor response curves are meant to provide musicians with some sort of signal that is more beneficial in a live settings. Neutrality matters just as much in this area. These are just junk IEM's like most of the high dollar ones, the custom IEM industry is IMO a bit of a scam. A lot of musicians don't use custom IEM's either for live, and the ones that used off the shelf IEM's, I would look up their response curves to get a better idea of what I'm looking at. I'm a little annoyed at how often users here chime in about the music performance side of things when they've never been a part of it.

I have to honestly question your experience here. The most effective part of custom IEM's is the seal. They act like earplugs to seal out the other noise in the room. Without this, you hear both the monitor mix and the PA. But what you hear from the PA is a mismatch of frequencies. This causes massive problems for musicians on stage. I know that not everybody uses customs, but the pro's do and there's a reason for it. The frequency response curve doesn't matter if they don't seal. If they do have a good seal then the monitor mixer can easily manipulate the frequency response to help the musician get what they need. So the frequency response is a much lower priority than distortion, headroom, custom seal, and other factors. JH Roxanne's are probably the most utilized in-ear of all time. Yes, they have some issues, but Jerry Harvey changed the live music industry with his designs and this is one of the best.

 

[Geert]

The most effective part of custom IEM's is the seal. They act like earplugs to seal out the other noise in the room.

Earlier you mentioned these IEM's provide "as much as 35db reduction of outside noise". The 100€ Shure E215's I mentioned earlier provide 20dB to more then 30dB of reduction from 400Hz on, the E425's do even better. It isn't easy to compare isolation numbers because they're frequency dependent, but these Shures are perfectly fit for the job and a massive improvement over floor monitors. (And yes, they can go very loud).

But I also love the fit of custom ear pieces. Also much easier to insert. So they do have certain benefits.

 

[LIΟN]

Professional musicians rarely use these because they don't have a proper seal to get rid of outside noise. That's the point of custom in-ears. The seal is 75% of the battle here.

I know exactly what you mean.
someone suggested that the FR characteristics might be due to the fact that they’re used for stage monitoring, so I simply attached the FR of some well-known universal IEMs that are widely used. The seal of custom IEMs is a given, so I don’t understand why you keep mentioning it.

If a musician were to use AirPods Pro for monitoring at a small venue (as opposed to a big concert with large PA systems), would that be completely unacceptable? The seal is indeed a key advantage of custom IEMs, and that’s a given.
Users are entitled to express their thoughts in reviews, and I believe it's normal for people to comment on aspects that aren’t so obvious (like response characteristics), rather than on things that are self-explanatory.

 

[anaveragebear]

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.

Interesting, thank you for the context!

 

[anaveragebear]

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:

View attachment 391669

(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.

Thanks for this. It is clear I was not correct and I don't want to misinform, so I'm going to delete my original comment.

 

[Cote Dazur]

Thank you @amirm for this review and thank you @ThatSoundsGood for putting those pro IEM in perspective.

As I am not a musician performing live that might need those kind of IEM, those are not for me, and probably for not for over 90% of this forum readers. My beloved Truthear Zero, which would be useless on Stage, will keep doing a perfect job for my specific IEM experience.

Once again the science is exposing a myth so endearing to Audiophiles, such as: If it is liked and used by pro musician or recording studio, it should be great for HiFi enthusiast. Well, in most cases (all?) it is not, as the context and expectation are widely different.

As usual, between Amir essential work and a few knowledgeable ASR members, we have access to objective and educated information, elevating our understanding of what matters when in pursuit of audio excellence.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Earlier you mentioned these IEM's provide "as much as 35db reduction of outside noise". The 100€ Shure E215's I mentioned earlier provide 20dB to more then 30dB of reduction from 400Hz on, the E425's do even better. It isn't easy to compare isolation numbers because they're frequency dependent, but these Shures are perfectly fit for the job and a massive improvement over floor monitors. (And yes, they can go very loud).

But I also love the fit of custom ear pieces. Also much easier to insert. So they do have certain benefits.

I have a few sets of E215's as a last resort and they are great for generic ear buds. But they don't isolate anywhere close to a custom IEM. Customs isolate way below 400HZ. So it's not even close. The problem is that if you block out frequencies above 400Hz but not below it, you then hear the room/PA system in the lower frequency band and that can cause a lot of problems (especially for singers trying to hear the pitch of instruments). I agree that the 215's are probably better than floor wedges in most situations, but the isolation through the whole frequency range is going to be drastically different.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

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.

For the most part, I agree here. I don't think they're "tuned" better at all, but. I constantly find myself using EQ to get rid of the excess 200-600Hz and I'm adding 2Khz-6Khz in mixes. Which is funny, because I think it's getting closer to the Harmon curve that way. I never liked the Roxannes for hifi listening. I did, however, find them to have a wider stereo image than previous models of custom in-ears that I used. The only Custom IEM's I've ever liked for hifi are the 64 Audio 18's.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

I know exactly what you mean.
someone suggested that the FR characteristics might be due to the fact that they’re used for stage monitoring, so I simply attached the FR of some well-known universal IEMs that are widely used. The seal of custom IEMs is a given, so I don’t understand why you keep mentioning it.

If a musician were to use AirPods Pro for monitoring at a small venue (as opposed to a big concert with large PA systems), would that be completely unacceptable? The seal is indeed a key advantage of custom IEMs, and that’s a given.
Users are entitled to express their thoughts in reviews, and I believe it's normal for people to comment on aspects that aren’t so obvious (like response characteristics), rather than on things that are self-explanatory.

I'm not sure that people understand how much the seal affects the experience for musicians on stage. That's why I keep mentioning it. There's a huge focus on the EQ curve but that's easy for a mix engineer to deal with. We have EQ on every input and output. But we can't fix a poor seal. If there's a ton of leakage into the artist's ears on stage from the PA, we can't fix that. I have literally been dealing with this problem on tour over the last several weeks. So when I see people saying that $20 earbuds will outperform these then I realize that there are a lot of people who are not understanding the whole context what they're meant for.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

A flat turing with a quite strong peak at 8 kHz should provide "detail" and "spaciousness" ? I don´t think so. Or at least only as a fake effect. Other than the use as a monitor in a very noisy environment, I cannot see any advantage in such a tuning and even as a monitor it is questionable. Just outdated.

I could be wrong here, but I think that some of the 8Khz range peaking is due to the tubes inside that carry the audio from the drivers to the ear canal. It's similar to a port resonance. This is a major reason that I began using the 64 Audio products with TIA drivers in them. This resonance is gone in their models.

 

[anphex]

Yes, but you're misunderstanding something, read the bit in Amir's review where he says:
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"If you look to the top left, you see a set of trim controls that are supposed to change the bass response. I tested that and what they call "bass" extends up to 1 kHz! Shame as I was hoping it would boost < 100 Hz. On the other hand, I needed the controls to equalize the left and right channels. Setting them to the middle (by eye) produced a response in the right channel which was well below that of left."
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Yep, so you can't be sure what frequency response you're starting with because the trim controls on the IEM are unreliable, so therefore you can't be sure what your starting frequency response is & therefore it invalidates any EQ. In fact Amir also mentions in his conclusion that you'd need "instrumentation" to match the channels and without that you end up "listening to a soup of mismatched frequency responses". Yeah, so that's where I'm coming from.

Yes yes yes I understand and completely agree but I mean using a pure separate digital EQ, like a system wide windows/mac/android EQ software, completely ignoring the shipped EQ. With this there is the possibility to turn this headphones into something very good at last.

 

[Robbo99999]

Yes yes yes I understand and completely agree but I mean using a pure separate digital EQ, like a system wide windows/mac/android EQ software, completely ignoring the shipped EQ. With this there is the possibility to turn this headphones into something very good at last.

Ah, you're not quite there yet I think, I don't think you understand just yet, basically no one can know what frequency response they have with this IEM because you have to have the trim switches of the IEM set to something and you can never know when it's at "neutral" because Amir set them to the middle by eye and it produced mismatched channels with different frequency responses. The only way an owner of this IEM can be sure of their starting point is if they have a measurement rig. So it's not possible to apply an EQ to these IEM's because you don't know your starting point because the trim switches are unreliable & you have to have those set to something (they can't be bypassed).

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Ah, you're not quite there yet I think, I don't think you understand just yet, basically no one can know what frequency response they have with this IEM because you have to have the trim switches of the IEM set to something and you can never know when it's at "neutral" because Amir set them to the middle by eye and it produced mismatched channels with different frequency responses. The only way an owner of this IEM can be sure of their starting point is if they have a measurement rig. So it's not possible to apply an EQ to these IEM's because you don't know your starting point because the trim switches are unreliable & you have to have those set to something (they can't be bypassed).

To further this statement, the fit of the custom IEM can cause even more drastic changes than what was measured. For example, if they aren't aimed properly then you can really lose the top end. Plus, if each in-ear unit isn't aimed the same then the frequency response that the listener experiences is even more drastic than the measurement mismatch.
So, EQ will ALWAYS be applied with these. They are meant for live inputs to be mixed into them. We have EQ on every input and every output. We use it. We use a lot of it. When the artist says that "it sounds too dark" then you add top end. When the artist says "make my snare more beefy" then you add 100Hz to the snare drum. So, while the standard EQ could be better, it doesn't matter as much as the low distortion and custom fit of the unit.

 

[Ktacos]

And talking of another discussion, another one is how do we even know that's the best frequency response for a stage monitor - the answer is probably we don't! I'm not confident that it would be.

We do know what it is, it's neutral as is generally allows for higher spl before feedback and gives the monitor engineer a predictable response to tailor to the performer. In shows where there is time and the crew cares, I will walk around the stage checking the monitors response on stage giving the FOH guy feedback on EQ to apply to get things neutral.

 

[Ktacos]

To further this statement, the fit of the custom IEM can cause even more drastic changes than what was measured. For example, if they aren't aimed properly then you can really lose the top end. Plus, if each in-ear unit isn't aimed the same then the frequency response that the listener experiences is even more drastic than the measurement mismatch.

Aiming a custom IEM? There is no aiming, they're in your ear, coutoured to your ear canal, there's no movement to aim them. "Aimed at the same response" ? This is just all nonsense and I'm not sure where you're even getting this.

With poor fitment the fisrt thing to go is the low end, not the top end.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Aiming a custom IEM? There is no aiming, they're in your ear, coutoured to your ear canal, there's no movement to aim them. "Aimed at the same response" ? This is just all nonsense and I'm not sure where you're even getting this.

With poor fitment the fisrt thing to go is the low end, not the top end.

With a poor seal, you lose the low end. With poor aiming you can lose everything else. It's easy to experience this by taking an in-ear and moving it in your ear while listening to music. The frequency response changes drastically. And therefore, each ear can be different. I've been battling this for a long time. This is why I keep saying how important the custom fit is. The exit area for the drivers on these ears comes from tubes and the top end can be aimed more directly at the ear drum. 64 audio has figured this out much better with their custom in-ears. You're welcome to think it's nonsense but it's clearly not to anyone who has experienced it.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

We do know what it is, it's neutral as is generally allows for higher spl before feedback and gives the monitor engineer a predictable response to tailor to the performer. In shows where there is time and the crew cares, I will walk around the stage checking the monitors response on stage giving the FOH guy feedback on EQ to apply to get things neutral.

Realistically, the frequency response is different for every performer based on their level of hearing damage, what they're listening to in their mix and how well their in-ears seal and are aimed. The PA deployment and brand are crucial to this, as you're mentioning here. Since it's normally lower frequencies coming off of the back of the PA then you're going to battle that with wedges or in-ears on the stage.
While neutral is a good start, most singers need to hear their voice as brighter since they hear both the in-ears and their jaw/head vibration when they sing. This causes many problems, including some notes to be out of polarity to their ears. It's drastically different to listen to someone sing on in-ears vs. being the singer since you're hearing your own head voice and the in-ears at the same time. Couple that with the PA kicking back your voice at you in a completely uneven frequency response and you start realize how difficult performing can be. Plus, the guy mixing it is hearing something different than the performer depending on his/her proximity to the PA, fit of the in-ears and other factors. You're practically better off being a mind reader than listening.....