Jerry Harvey (JH) Custom IEM Review

[brandall10]

I'm no expert on the history of all of this but here's some additional perspective that focuses on the Pro Audio Industry:
Marty Garcia, owner of Future Sonics began using in-ear monitors on stage in 1982 with Todd Rundgren. He is arguably the first person to popularize them in Pro Audio. Lots can be learned from his website and he has some great products.

About Future Sonics

futuresonics.com

UE was definitely the first company widely used in Pro Audio/ On stage by performers. This was happening in the late 90's and early 2000's and most people were on the UE7's. The UE10's and UE11's were the next popular move since they had more low end. Of course, these were all Jerry Harvey Designs. Jerry has a great reputation and is well liked in the Pro Audio Community. His designs then went into the JH stuff in 2007 and set the standard for a decade. They are still one of the most popular brands used by musicians on stage. And I agree that it's fair to say that he is the father of multi-driver customs and his designs have powered more live concerts than anyone else's by a long shot.

Great additional context, thanks. I mentioned in an earlier reply that they were first used in pro audio in the 80s and that JH was the one who innovated further by using multi-driver customs.

My comments are more from the perspective of their impact on the hifi market (ie. the head-fi community).

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Great additional context, thanks. I mentioned in an earlier reply that they were first used in pro audio in the 80s and that JH was the one who innovated further by using multi-driver customs.

My comments are more from the perspective of their impact on the hifi market (ie. the head-fi community).

Your comments are very relevant and excellent! The whole head-fi stuff is not something I'm familiar with at all.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Custom shelling is not some prohibitive exercise that has to cost $2000 more than an equivalent universal. Custom JH13s were less than half the price of these Roxannes, and there was an entry level model (JH5?) that was less than a quarter the price but still got you a custom shelled multi-driver JH IEM

That must be an old price on the 13's because they're $1,800 now. The cheaper models barely have a margin for the company that makes them. There are many other costs also, including re-making poor fits and generally servicing the music industry. Properly made custom shelling is time consuming and difficult to get right consistently. It takes a skilled technician.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

A good friend of mine who mixes front of house at a performing arts centre tested the Salnotes zeros against his JH customs at a show recently, and mentioned that he couldn't hear a big difference as he switched back and forth during the show.

If he mixes FOH, then what was he using IEM's for? How loud was he listening? Since he was only listening, would you say that his opinion would be the same if he was one of the performers? Were the Salnotes being driven by a wireless belt pack in the same way that the Roxanne's would be in their intended use?

It was only in testing in his studio that he could hear large differences in tonality ... including the resonance in the zeros in their top end and their squished soundstage.

Generic earbuds often sound squished to me, especially compared to customs.

Live sound environments can mask a lot of "problems" ... But I think it says something that a well-tuned $20 IEM can sound nearly as good as a $2000 custom fitted IEM when comparing in their intended use scenarios.

It won't sound even close when compared in a professional setting with professionals (an arena stage with an arena sized PA system playing at the same time). A $20 IEM won't give the seal (sorry I'm saying it again) and won't stand up to the same abuse that customs have in the live environment. Alternatively, the Roxanne's are not meant for the studio (even if someone advertised them that way) and they will be ineffective in a studio application . So they are two totally different things meant for different applications. Rather than the live sound environment masking problems, I would say that live sound environments present a lot of different problems and different priorities in IEM's. So for people who mix monitors in a live environment, the Roxanne's would be chosen pretty much 99% of the time over any non-custom earbud.

 

[LevityProject]

Ahh haha ... Mixing on well tuned IEMs is so helpful as a reference check in a live setting.

The Salnotes were hard wired to front of house.

I've used mine on stage, through a pack and loved it. Great seal, and impressive sub bass with good clarity and acceptable spaciousness.

Were they perfect? No. Did they get the job done? Yes, and much better than IEMs that cost 10x as much.

Isolation is good, but not excellent, tonal balance is very good though not perfect, and the soundstage is narrow.

I would not use the JH customs reviewed in this thread to mix anything. I'd be getting excellent isolation for a terrible tonal balance. It defeats the purpose, unless perhaps I knew their tonality really well and could work around it.

But as others have said these are older now and from people I know touring, the newer customs sound excellent.

 

[brandall10]

That must be an old price on the 13's because they're $1,800 now. The cheaper models barely have a margin for the company that makes them. There are many other costs also, including re-making poor fits and generally servicing the music industry. Properly made custom shelling is time consuming and difficult to get right consistently. It takes a skilled technician.

IIRC, the 13s were originally $1100 upon release. I paid $1300 for my Roxannes but that that was a pre-release price, I believe that shifted to $1500 on full release. So things have gotten considerably more expensive, more than inflation would suggest.

I'm a little surprised the Roxannes are popular enough to command that price. They were polarizing on release, many still preferring the 13s as their best model, and seemed to lose favor as they released other siren series models.

 

[brandall10]

If he mixes FOH, then what was he using IEM's for? How loud was he listening? Since he was only listening, would you say that his opinion would be the same if he was one of the performers? Were the Salnotes being driven by a wireless belt pack in the same way that the Roxanne's would be in their intended use?

Generic earbuds often sound squished to me, especially compared to customs.

It won't sound even close when compared in a professional setting with professionals (an arena stage with an arena sized PA system playing at the same time). A $20 IEM won't give the seal (sorry I'm saying it again) and won't stand up to the same abuse that customs have in the live environment. Alternatively, the Roxanne's are not meant for the studio (even if someone advertised them that way) and they will be ineffective in a studio application . So they are two totally different things meant for different applications. Rather than the live sound environment masking problems, I would say that live sound environments present a lot of different problems and different priorities in IEM's. So for people who mix monitors in a live environment, the Roxanne's would be chosen pretty much 99% of the time over any non-custom earbud.

Since you're speaking from the pro audio world, my thought is customs are probably mandatory on stage from a utility perspective, you simply don't want them coming out or loosing seal in the middle of a performance. Personally, I didn't really get what seemed to be better isolation against some of my better fitting universal IEMs in a noisy office environment, probably due to acrylic shells having some ability to transmit sound. Silicone, for sure though, but those are possibly bad for stage use due to difficulty putting in and taking out, esp. as they heat up as a performer moves around under bright lights.

I'm also of the mind that the typical harman targeting, single driver chifi IEMs are almost certainly better from an actual audio perspective, and that frequency response and distortion figures largely tell what you need to know about performance. Many of these have been instrumented on this site to show excellent performance. These companies are approaching this as an engineering problem, which it is. Everyone, regardless of application, should aspire to have Genelec in their ears and some of these get awfully close for the price of a steak dinner. After being in the head-fi scene for ~15 years, probably blew over $50k on it, my take is the number of drivers in an IEM is more a marketing exercise now. Before instrumentation became popular in recent years I do believe these companies in good faith felt there was an engineering aspect here, but at this point it's dubious at best and all golden ears fallacy stuff.

Making distinctions about what is for stage vs studio vs home AFA actual audio performance seems to me to be a bit of a shell game. Some members on this site have Genelec and Neumann in their living rooms because they're excellent. All these pro audio CIEM companies marketed heavily to the head-fi community and probably made the bulk of their revenue from that market - not unusual to find members with collections of $20k+ in CIEMs. Many members would buy whatever was the new hotness every 6 months or so. 1000+ page threads on $4k CIEMS are not uncommon there. These companies clearly made claims about each successive high end models pushing the audio envelope for home use, happily latching onto common audiophile jargon to push product. They all had booths at the national and regional shows, sponsorships on head-fi, and representatives actively involved on the head-fi forums usually on a daily basis. Pre-market announcements, presale discounts, etc. I personally met and chatted w/ Jerry Harvey at a CanJam many years ago.

For stage use, I'm unsure what an artist is getting by spending more in this space beyond some well measuring, lower end customs. Bigger touring acts of course will have no problem kitting their band out with $10-20k in high-end custom sets because they're going to want what is the 'best', but even if the audio is a bit better it seems the volume levels on stage (both ambient and in the IEMs themselves to combat ambient leakage) will just compress things anyway to the point where it's moot.

To be clear, I feel there is a huge distinction to be drawn between the pro audio community in the headphone/iem space vs the speaker space. The speaker companies are serious about engineering in a way that is lacking when it comes to stuff that goes on or in our ears. We've seen this bear out many times over on the products tested for this site. This particular review exemplifies this.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Since you're speaking from the pro audio world, my thought is customs are probably mandatory on stage from a utility perspective, you simply don't want them coming out or loosing seal in the middle of a performance. Personally, I didn't really get what seemed to be better isolation against some of my better fitting universal IEMs in a noisy office environment, probably due to acrylic shells having some ability to transmit sound. Silicone, for sure though, but those are possibly bad for stage use due to difficulty putting in and taking out, esp. as they heat up as a performer moves around under bright lights.

Precisely. A noisy office environment is a far cry from an arena stage with a PA system spitting out 105db. The fit/seal is 75-80% of the game.

I'm also of the mind that the typical harman targeting, single driver chifi IEMs are almost certainly better from an actual audio perspective, and that frequency response and distortion figures largely tell what you need to know about performance. Many of these have been instrumented on this site to show excellent performance. These companies are approaching this as an engineering problem, which it is. Everyone, regardless of application, should aspire to have Genelec in their ears and some of these get awfully close for the price of a steak dinner. After being in the head-fi scene for ~15 years, probably blew over $50k on it, my take is the number of drivers in an IEM is more a marketing exercise now. Before instrumentation became popular in recent years I do believe these companies in good faith felt there was an engineering aspect here, but at this point it's dubious at best and all golden ears fallacy stuff.

Mostly agree. The number of drivers is largely an effort to get sensitivity to be better with the poor amplifiers in the belt packs and keep distortion down. So it's not just a marketing thing as much as much as a utility thing. The Roxanne's have low distortion and high sensitivity for a clear reason. So they're successful there. Once you EQ the output to them and make it the same as thing Harmon curve (which I do in about 10 seconds before the artist hears anything) then you have a really excellent performing piece of equipment.

Making distinctions about what is for stage vs studio vs home AFA actual audio performance seems to me to be a bit of a shell game. Some members on this site have Genelec and Neumann in their living rooms because they're excellent. All these pro audio CIEM companies marketed heavily to the head-fi community and probably made the bulk of their revenue from that market - not unusual to find members with collections of $20k+ in CIEMs. Many members would buy whatever was the new hotness every 6 months or so. 1000+ page threads on $4k CIEMS are not uncommon there. These companies clearly made claims about each successive high end models pushing the audio envelope for home use, happily latching onto common audiophile jargon to push product. They all had booths at the national and regional shows, sponsorships on head-fi, and representatives actively involved on the head-fi forums usually on a daily basis. Pre-market announcements, presale discounts, etc. I personally met and chatted w/ Jerry Harvey at a CanJam many years ago.

I would agree that it's a bit more of a shell game, but the CIEM companies need the revenue from the head-fi stuff to stay in business because there just isn't enough sales in Pro Audio to stay afloat. I think these companies would do better if they paid some more attention to the Frequency response curve, but we see that some of them actually do that now.

For stage use, I'm unsure what an artist is getting by spending more in this space beyond some well measuring, lower end customs. Bigger touring acts of course will have no problem kitting their band out with $10-20k in high-end custom sets because they're going to want what is the 'best', but even if the audio is a bit better it seems the volume levels on stage (both ambient and in the IEMs themselves to combat ambient leakage) will just compress things anyway to the point where it's moot.

The artist gets customer service (repairs, new custom sets sent quickly, etc.). But the reality is that we've been using inferior products for a long time and we are actually used the normal work arounds with them (lots of EQ........lots and lots of EQ).

To be clear, I feel there is a huge distinction to be drawn between the pro audio community in the headphone/iem space vs the speaker space. The speaker companies are serious about engineering in a way that is lacking when it comes to stuff that goes on or in our ears. We've seen this bear out many times over on the products tested for this site. This particular review exemplifies this.

Well said.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

IIRC, the 13s were originally $1100 upon release. I paid $1300 for my Roxannes but that that was a pre-release price, I believe that shifted to $1500 on full release. So things have gotten considerably more expensive, more than inflation would suggest.

I'm a little surprised the Roxannes are popular enough to command that price. They were polarizing on release, many still preferring the 13s as their best model, and seemed to lose favor as they released other siren series models.

The cost to make them has gone up because of the labor with the people who manage the 3d printing and customizing the shells to fit correctly. It's really difficult to find those specialists for a reasonable price. The cost of drivers in them has also gone up because the drivers are so inconsistent, they have to test them and match them as much as possible. I also think that some of the drivers are just not used because they are so bad. So it costs money to test them also. This is what I keep asking people if they really understand what it takes to make them. The labor is expensive and time consuming if you want to send out a consistent product. Plus, people like me now have measurement equipment so we're constantly checking them to see if they work and sending them back if there's a problem.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Ahh haha ... Mixing on well tuned IEMs is so helpful as a reference check in a live setting.

The Salnotes were hard wired to front of house.

I've used mine on stage, through a pack and loved it. Great seal, and impressive sub bass with good clarity and acceptable spaciousness.

These are vague terms for a science review site.

Were they perfect? No. Did they get the job done? Yes, and much better than IEMs that cost 10x as much.

Isolation is good, but not excellent, tonal balance is very good though not perfect, and the soundstage is narrow.

"soundstage"= very subjective

I would not use the JH customs reviewed in this thread to mix anything. I'd be getting excellent isolation for a terrible tonal balance. It defeats the purpose, unless perhaps I knew their tonality really well and could work around it.

Those that use them know their tonality well and know how to use them. That's why they've been worn by more performers and engineers than probably any other in-ear.

But as others have said these are older now and from people I know touring, the newer customs sound excellent.

Some newer models comply better with the Harmon curve and sometimes fit better. Some have also gone to a tubeless design for the tweeter (64 audio) and some have a linear impedance circuit that helps with the poor amplifiers in the belt packs (also 64 Audio). So the technology has advanced. That being said, I still see a lot of people using the Roxanne's to great success. I think it's easy to look at these measurements and not understand the extent to which live monitor engineers get around the problems quite effortlessly.

 

[oscar_dziki]

There was a time when I didn't know any better, there was no ASR, and those cans were the thing. Thank God I was too poor to buy them back then

 

[brandall10]

Mostly agree. The number of drivers is largely an effort to get sensitivity to be better with the poor amplifiers in the belt packs and keep distortion down. So it's not just a marketing thing as much as much as a utility thing. The Roxanne's have low distortion and high sensitivity for a clear reason. So they're successful there. Once you EQ the output to them and make it the same as thing Harmon curve (which I do in about 10 seconds before the artist hears anything) then you have a really excellent performing piece of equipment.

Is this a big difference between the 6 driver JH13? One other concern would be durability due to the complexity of the design. I retired my Roxannes as the sound changed in one of the earpieces, there was a bass suckout. JH believed the low end driver unit died, possibly due to moisture. There really isn't an easy or cheap fix for that, you have to have the unit rebuilt and the quote was fairly high to fix, so I just resold them as damaged. They got around two years/1000 hours of use, so decent value, but it would give me pause in a more aggressive environment.

Granted, if they work well when EQ'ed and its an easy situation to address and they otherwise work well for the application, not too much harm there. I use a heavily EQ'ed KSE1200 as my daily driver.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Is this a big difference between the 6 driver JH13?

They have a different frequency response also. I can't quite remember what the difference is but I recently tested both of them. I know of several artists who prefer the 13 over the Roxanne's. I have never used the 13's.

One other concern would be durability due to the complexity of the design. I retired my Roxannes as the sound changed in one of the earpieces, there was a bass suckout. JH believed the low end driver unit died, possibly due to moisture. There really isn't an easy or cheap fix for that, you have to have the unit rebuilt and the quote was fairly high to fix, so I just resold them as damaged. They got around two years/1000 hours of use, so decent value, but it would give me pause in a more aggressive environment.

This is a double edge sword. I have found that the Roxanne's are really durable overall, but the drivers do go out. In the live touring environment, everything is subjected to the most harsh conditions. This is why I laugh about cheaper generics being "just as good". I've had artists on Shure generics and they rarely last more than 2 shows due to moisture or wear and tear. So, yes the Roxanne's will eventually break but they will last much longer than just about anything else. I have a set from 2015 and one from 2019. I've probably mixed 500-700 shows on them and I've never blown a driver. On the contrary, moisture kills everything. I have had them go down due to sweat or water (I worked for a band that dumped bottles of water on their head during the show). You can often get them to dry out with a dehumidifier but the drivers can only take so much moisture before they die. They make them with a cupped exit point now that resists moisture better.

Granted, if they work well when EQ'ed and its an easy situation to address and they otherwise work well for the application, not too much harm there. I use a heavily EQ'ed KSE1200 as my daily driver.

Yeah, this is my point here. People look at the frequency response and freak out, but it's almost not important. We already EQ so much and we're used to it. These things have low distortion and high sensitivity. So they work quite well, jut not for head-fi. Using these for head-fi is like using one box of a line-array in my living room and then complaining that it doesn't sound right. Or maybe it's like using a screw driver to open a can of beans. It will work but not very well.

 

[brandall10]

They have a different frequency response also. I can't quite remember what the difference is but I recently tested both of them. I know of several artists who prefer the 13 over the Roxanne's. I have never used the 13's.

I meant from a utility perspective. The Roxanne's have slightly higher sensitivity. JH doesn't post distortion figures, but if you're starting with something that has a better FR out of the gate, it may not be as big of a deal. Do they have real pro audio advantages that one would opt to pay an extra $500 for?

When I bought them, JH pushed the number of drivers hard, saying they had a wider FR with better soundstage. I've heard the 13 once, at a show so a bit noisy, but I had my Roxannes on me to compare and definitely preferred the 13s.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

I meant from a utility perspective. The Roxanne's have slightly higher sensitivity. JH doesn't post distortion figures, but if you're starting with something that has a better FR out of the gate, it may not be as big of a deal. Do they have real pro audio advantages that one would opt to pay an extra $500 for?

More drivers! More is better, right? Hahaha. I haven't heard the 13's so I don't really know. I think the Roxanne's sound a lot better than the 16's. The stereo image is definitely wider and the top end is smoother. Take those words for what they're worth though. It's totally subjective. And yeah, if the frequency response was better to start with then we would have a better product. That being said, they have more low end than Amir's measurement shows. I think the low end, when turned all the way up on their stupid cable feature gives a curve that is much closer to the harmon curve. If you just EQ out 200-500Hz then you're at a good starting point so it isn't as dismal as the review seems.

When I bought them, JH pushed the number of drivers hard, saying they had a wider FR with better soundstage. I've heard the 13 once, at a show so a bit noisy, but I had my Roxannes on me to compare and definitely preferred the 13s.

It's all so subjective and more drivers is certainly a marketing thing, but I do think it was their best product when they came out. The biggest advantage I know of with the Roxanne's is that they get louder than anything else I've ever used. I worked with a band that had one member listening at about 114db and another at 112db (you could hear the mix clearly when you held the in ears in your hands about 6" away from your ears) through them and they took the punishment pretty well. I would blow drivers a few times a tour but when you're slamming them that hard, they're bound to break eventually. Plus, they dump water on their heads and sweat like crazy. So I really think that the Roxanne's or JH16's are the only models I would recommend for that but it's an extreme case. I've only owned the 16's and Roxanne's. My 16's are from 2010. They still work perfectly fine. The Roxanne's sound much better to me but I did a lot of shows on the 16's. I am currently using UE Live's with the band I'm with and that's a whole different set of problems. I highly prefer the 64 Audio 12t's. I put a band on them last year and they all couldn't believe how much better they sounded. I find that it takes much less EQ to get where I need to be with them. And whoever makes them at the factory is really consistent with getting a good fit.
I think we're seeing an evolution with the equipment here. These things are hearing aid drivers and were never originally meant for something like this. We're seeing much better technology now. I've seen the same thing with PA equipment and stage monitors. We used to blow up 12" drivers in Clair 12AM's all of the time. I've done tours where we carried several spares. This is just what happens on the road. Another example is the advent of line array technology. 30 years ago (even 20 for some shows) the PA systems were still baffle PA's with a ton of comb filtering and other issues. Now we can get most of the seats in a big venue to be within a few db of SPL of each other. We can spread the sub energy around evenly and keep it off the stage. It's wildly different in the last 20 years. So, in-ears are seeing the same thing. I really just got the technology to start measuring in-ears a few years ago. So, we're learning a lot. This review and discussion has really put a lot into perspective for me.