Mr. Speakers AEON

Yes, But first blame Tyll, several times, and then any resentment or anger you have left can be put on me. Or you could have just borrowed my pair.

Yes, I'm in the test group and I'm biased. But I have been around the block and have a decent understanding of frequency response with headphones and how it compares to similar products. But yes, take everything I say with a grain of salt. There is a good chance the I may have been drinking when I make comments.**hick**

 

You either had a defective unit, didn't break them in (they really need 100 hours), or are very sensitive. While they are bright, your experience is very inconsistent with most everyone. That said, please post your Ether C comments on the Ether thread(s).

 

The sound so far described sounds to me like a ZMF Ori. If a similar sound sig is there in a more compact and much for ergonomic package I would be heavily intrigued. I being a comfort nut will say that: a headphone might sound like cosmic beings tickling your ears but, if they feel like pain and suffering on your head, what's the point?

 

If this is a hobby and those that are the best at the hobby area artists, then...

“Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?”

― Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay

 

lmao, I think it should be the other way around. If the headphone manufacturers could empathize with how the consumers are suffering due to the bullshit steep pricing, I think they would protest against the horrible inclemency of hi-fi headphone pricing which is indeed life to many of us in the hobby by making sensible pricing a real thing again. Hence making art with the true spirit of artsmanship.

and I will quote this from innerfidelity: "Even if you don't have much competition, price your products based on costs and reasonable ratios, and not on what you think the market will bare. This ensures that consumers will share in the profit of the product by receiving high value for their money spent; and will also make it tough for competitors to deliver similar value to consumers at that price point."

I just love every bit of this. Hifiman needs to understand this and so does the rest of the hifi-manufacturers.

 

Iriver started the trend of obnoxiously priced items, and nouveau riche keeps lapping these items up. As Fang puts it, pricing it sanely (or like how Schiit does it) means a lot of lost profit for your business.

 

I wanted to offer some more impressions of the Aeon as it seems there is a lot of interest and not many reviews.

1. If anyone is worried about comfort....don't. These are some of the most comfortable headphones I've ever tried. It's a combination of the low weight 339 grams and the elongnated shape of the cups. I really like the shape of the cups because it's more accommodating of ears sizes and possibly improves the staging somewhat.

2. This is an closed headphone with a good stage and good tone. So many of the closed headphones that I've bought have failed at one or both of these points. So I end up getting irritated and or bored and have sold off every closed model that I bought with the exception of my customs. Staging sounds like when Sony used to make good closed headphone...cd3k, r10.

3. Better than Ether C/Flow? Honestly, I can see people picking this headphone over the flagship models and not just for the fact that it's priced in a friendlier bracket. An example that comes to mind is the pm-3. Lot's of people prefer the pm-3 over the pm-1 and pm-2 because it has a more neutral frequency response and get the tonality right. The Aeon is just a very good sounding headphone which is supported in Tyll's measurements. I can see many people getting behind the Aeon for it's price, comfort and very nice sound. It's just a good combination of characteristics.

4. The overall signature is cohesive and well balanced. It's sound is similar to the flagship but also different and I think that I like it more. Please keep in mind that I heard the final production tuning for only about five days. All my time before that was with earlier production models which needed tweaks and changes. This is an excellent headphone for mids/vocals. Female vocal resonate well and reveal the singers physical voice characteristics clearly. Patricia Barber has a rather husky jazz voice. Listening with Aeon I can hear lot's of the subtle nuances in her voice that remind me of when I heard her live. Her voice has a more chesty resonate quality rather than a singer like Eva Cassidy who has a higher pitched delivery.

5. The bass is not shy. But it is linear. Meaning that I don't hear more bass all of the time (Sony z7). But when I put on some EDM that has real sub bass, the Aeon punches really well. The bass here does not leave me wanting for more in the least.

6. The treble extends well but not harsh or strident. This may be the biggest difference between Aeon and Ether C. I felt the treble on the Ether C could be harsh at times. I never felt that way with Aeon. I get plenty of micro detail without ever wincing from stridency of the highs. It's a friendlier signature than Ether C.

Okay, that's it for now. My focus for 2017 on SBAF is posting less with better quality.

 

It's helpful information. Thanks @Ice-man

I heard lots of complaints about quality issues for mrspeakers' previous offerings (particularly flow-c).
Hope Dan and his team carefully match LR channels and pay more attentions for quality assurances this time.
This is mainly because I assume (well-isolated) closed-back headphones are more difficult to control unit-to-unit/part-to-part variability, especially when it comes to small companies.

 

I placed an order for Aeon when the pre-orders opened up. I was expecting that it would be sold out pretty quick. But still 192 left in stock for the special pricing.?

 

It's a case of one instance only, but Dan told me production units will have matched pair drivers through a sorting process. He said they couldn't do that with the pre-production run my sample came from and warned me that he thought the drivers may be more mismatched that I would like. Turns out (see measurements) that they were pretty damned close. Dan was surprised, but said they've gotten better at unit-to-unit performance reliability in driver manufacture.

 

@Ice-man , I apologize if you said this, but what DAC/AMP were you using them with?

 

@Ice-man, can these be driven out of a phone? do these scale well enough with better gear?

 

Yes they sound pretty decent right from my HTC. Better with dragonfly red and x5. And even better still from a desktop amp.

 

Sorry if this has been asked and answer, but @Ice-man any comparison to the Ether C 1.1? Is the AEON an upgrade? Better / worse detail? Bass response appears to be better, or at least warmer, than the Ether C 1.1, but FR graphs and actual listening don't always match up.

 

I actually prefer Aeon to Ether C. The staging was good on Ether C but the tonality was never quite right and it bugged me. Tone is very nice on the Aeon. Also, overall the Aeon has a slightly warmer tone which I also prefer.

 

@Ice-man thanks!

I did a little image manipulation with Tyll's charts. The Ether C is the 1.1 with one black pad (as I like it

 

Just saw this. Pretty much in line with what I said earlier today.

http://audio-head.com/mrspeakers-aeon-review/

 

Isn't the guy behind this website known as Shillhard around these parts?

He seems to be a Mrspeakers superfan.

Quote from the first paragraph:

''With the recent release of the Flow updates to the popular ETHER and ETHER C, MrSpeakers has improved two of the best headphones in their respective markets''

Can anybody really call the Ether or Ether C the 'best in their respective markets'' with a straight face?

I've yet to see a non glowing review on his website.

 

Haha...seems you are right.