This Sunday I attended the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, an exhibition for audio or hi-fi geeks in Denver CO.
I'm not a hi-fi geek by any means. First of all, I'm slightly deaf in my right ear since childhood. And the last time I bought speakers was when I was 17 years old. That's well over a quarter-century ago.
I still own my teenage years speakers (Celestion SL6s). They work fine, but I thought I should think about getting a new pair.
Plus, I'd just gotten a pair of Etymotics earphones with custom molds for my ears (see earlier post
here).
At the end of that post, I said: "
Anyway, this is my introduction to the world of custom-fit earphones. One can spend $1000+ on higher quality ear canal phones."
Well, on that note I ventured over to the JH Audio booth. Jerry Harvey introduced himself. So I listened to their top-of-the-line earphones. I A-B'ed the (universal fit) JH16 Pro earphones back-to-back against my custom-fit Etymotics that I had with me. I used the iPod section of my iPhone for source.
And damn... the JH16 Pros were obviously way better right from the start. In particular, they have real bass. They were offering $100 off as a show special and custom molding done right there for free.
These guys make it all way too easy. I was sold.
So I'm looking forward to my custom-molded JH16 Pros (right ear in transparent red, and left in transparent black); they should arrive in about a week.
Note that they take open mouth ear molds: hence, the picture of me biting on a polystyrene peanut. I understand they fit tighter that way because of the way the jaw moves. Hmm, I'd just spent $100 getting custom ear molds for my Etymotics, and the audiologist there didn't make open-mouth ear impressions for me.
I borrowed the JH16 Pros I was trying out and went over to the
Ray Samuels Audio booth to listen to their battery-powered portable headphone amp, called the
The Shadow. It would fit between the iPhone line-out and the earphones. Hmm, I'm afraid I'm going to be needing that as well. (
Good job there was no show special, otherwise I might have ordered one on the spot.)
I also listened to Stax SR-009 full size headphones driven by Woo Audio amplification. Electrostatics. It sounded fantastic. The total price was about $10,000. Man, for a headphone system? Arrgh.
I wandered around the other exhibits in a bit of a daze for the rest of the day until the 4pm closing time: remember, I'm actually looking for something to replace my current speakers.
There was way too much to see (actually, listen to) in one day. Plus my ears get fatigued after a while. Unfortunately, the only two I really liked were the
Wilson Sashas (at $30,000) and the
Sonus Faber Amati (at $36,500). The
Vandersteen 7s were $50,000. I heard them in two different rooms but found them a bit too forward, maybe it was the music being played in each case. Still
John Lee Hooker sounded great. The Sony SS-AR1 ($27,000) were great with
Joni Mitchell, and I'm not a fan of hers. I guess I could live with the Orion 4.0s; $14,000 but less if you build them from a kit yourself.
If you thought $1100 (JH16 Pro) was expensive for iPod earbud replacements, well it appears great speakers are totally unaffordable. Oh well.
Of course, then you need honking big amplifiers as well. The whole nine yards. And it starts to look like this:
Totally ridiculous. Who buys this stuff? I give up on the idea of replacing my speakers with something way better.
Hopping back in the
Hyundai Elantra from Enterprise, costing only $18.21 for one day's rental, my thoughts returned to normality. Also, having turned down the optional GPS, I navigated back to Denver International Airport (DIA) using my iPhone wedged next to the speedometer:
Arriving back at the airport, I happened by the
New Belgium Hub in Terminal 2.
I immediately recognized it of course, having passed through Denver during my trip to Mons, Belgium earlier this year.
(See my post
here).
This time though, time was on my side, so I had a few sips of beer while watching the sunset over DIA.
Not bad, not bad at all.
I've been listening to my brand-new pair of in-ear monitors for a couple of weeks now. They're the JH16 Pros I ordered at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest show.
They're extremely pricey and are custom-molded for my ears (done open-mouthed right at the show).
In partial mitigation, they are complex, having 8 drivers for each ear, and the sound quality (especially the bass) simply blow the custom-molded Etymotics but bass-light Hf3s that I had before out of the water.
You really don't feel you're missing anything with such tiny devices. It's as good as the best full-sized headphones. It's significantly better than my car audio system. I don't feel like listening to the Etymotics anymore. The difference is night-and-day and readily apparent from the first moments. I simply enjoy my music more with the JH16 Pros.
(Note: believe it or not, they're not quite top-of-the-line for JH Audio. There is a brand-new fancier version of the JH16 Pro with an external box containing a DSP crossover and amplifier for maybe $600 more. It's called the JH-3A. But it's not as portable obviously.)
I bought it for use on trips: long flights and all that, so sound isolation is also important to me: hence, the custom ear-molds. I am listening to music (Apple lossless) out of my iPhone 4.
I'm told the sound can be further improved by bypassing the iPhone's inexpensive internal DAC (Digital to Analog converter) and headphone amplifier for an outboard solution: in other words, using the iPhone as a digital transport only and outsourcing digital-to-analog conversion and amplification to a (presumably, higher-quality) external box or boxes.
Two solutions exist at the moment to take the digital output from an iDevice: the Fostex HP-P1 which contains a 32 bit DAC and a headphone amplifier in one box, or the Cypher Labs AlgoRhythm Solo DAC converter feeding another box such as the ALO Continental vacuum tube-based headphone amplifier.
The cost to the wallet is another $750-$1200 depending on the solution, plus you sacrifice portability since you need to carry along one or two other boxes along with my iPhone that also need to be battery powered and charged. The upside is that you get the last 10% of sound quality out of the JH16 Pros.
Maybe I'll go the outboard DAC and separate amplifier solution at a later date, but right now I'm amazed at and very happy with the great sound quality I'm getting from such a tiny speaker system.
