Visiting headphone shop, audio event, and small meet for testing headphones, IEMs, and other portable audio gears have been part of my activities for years. EarBlog will be covering brief impressions of audio gears and events related to audio gears. Please take note, this is not a review, but simply just brief impressions. That means it will be generally less accurate and detailed than a review.
Today (25 July 2017) I had a short visit to Zeppelin & Co. Singapore to test a new closed back headphones, MrSpeakers ÆON.
Product webpage:
https://www.mrspeakers.com/aeon.html
The moment I wear them, I immediately impressed by the fit and comfort. The overall design is really good and light weight (340 gr), and the earpad design is very comfortable, deep and spacious without being too large. 5/5 stars for fit and comfort.
I plugged it into my Light Harmonic GeekOut 2A, and started playing some familiar high definition flac files using foobar with WASAPI driver. At 95dB/mW efficiency and 13 ohms impedance, the planar driver demands higher power than regular headphones to achieve listening level. I noticed that I set the volume of my GO2A slightly higher than normal, and sometimes it switched to high gain for some tracks that need a higher level of volume.
Here is my brief impression of the MrSpeakers ÆON sound quality:
Clear and transparent are the most prominent sonic characters. ÆON treble is very rich sounding with lots of sparkles, without sounding harsh or overly hot. The earpad design also helps to create the holographic and spacious imaging. The perceived stereo imaging is quite spacious, very impressive for a closed back headphones.
While the higher frequency region was pretty impressive, the lower frequency region is, unfortunately, less impressive. The midrange is very clear but rather recessed. I tried vocal and some string instruments like cello, to my ears the timbre on the midrange area is not very natural due to the recessed lower mids. Vocal is too lean for my taste, and cello doesn't sound as natural as I expected. Bass has good sub bass extension but lacking power and punch. Bass punch is rather weak.
Though the lower frequency region is not very impressive, it is not in the category of bad sounding. I just expect more for the asking price. Overall sound quality is actually pretty good, especially for people who prefer clear and transparent sound with spacious imaging. For me, I need a fuller and more natural sounding midrange with slightly more powerful bass. I would rate 3.5/5 for the sound quality.
Overall MrSpeakers ÆON is a pretty good and decent headphone, although for the sound quality maybe it is slightly overpriced in my opinion. And IMHO not the headphone of choice for vocal. But for those looking for a closed back headphone with great comfort and clear sound, that has spacious holographic imaging more than other closed back headphones could offer, MrSpeakers ÆON would probably fit the requirement pretty well.
