[REVIEW] Creative Aurvana In-Ear2

Once upon a time when you mentioned ‘premium audio’ in the computer world, the name ‘Creative’ is what you would be referring to. Nowadays the name seems to get somewhat replaced by Apple.  To be fair, I do believe Creative still has the ‘tech’ in hardware to be an important character in the computer-related audio business (especially since computer audio is slowly eating away the share of transitional audio hardware, i.e. CD player). But on the software side (more referring to brain power, research and development, marketing, software design), Creative has been quite lacking compared its biggest DAP rival Apple. It proves that you don’t need to have the best hardware around to be successful; just some good and fresh ideas are enough to get your business flying straight to the moon. However, once in a while Creative does surprise us with some really good products. This time, it is the Aurvana In-Ear2.

The Aurvana brand is Creative’s attempt to penetrate the audiophile headphone market. The first product under the Aurvana brand is the original In-Ear, which has been largely overshadowed by other big brands. The new In-Ear2 is not intended to replace the original In-Ear, but more of a better model that is offered alongside. The original MSRP of In-Ear2 is actually around US$110, which is much less attractive for a single balanced armature based IEM. But as the model being released internationally, the price has been dropped globally to US$100 (and even slightly lower if you pick one up in Singapore, Creative’s homeland). The decision to keeping the In-Ear2 within the $100 price range is smart but still seems a tough sell when other single balanced armature IEM such as the Sherwood SE-777, Fischer Audio SBA-01, and SoundMAGIC PL-50 are all well below $100. So, does In-Ear2 deliver?

Know the History

Click on the picture below to visit NAMM's website for a 2007 video interview of Marty Garcia, founder and CEO of Future Sonics inc. and the inventor of custom IEM as he talk about the early history of IEM.

[REVIEW] NuForce uDAC - Big in Small

NuForce started its business more into speaker than into headphone, but their involvement in the head-fi community perhaps help shaped a different path for the company. Regardless, they always struck me as a company aims for design simplicity and high price/performance ratio, and maybe this is how uDAC could be described.

[REVIEW] Etymotic ER4P / ER4S - The Living Legends

To say Etymotic ER4 series is a classic is in itself an understatement. I mean, do any person knows of another IEM model that can be sold for 19 years with minimum change yet still be considered by many to be the golden standard of accuracy? Or perhaps we want to revisit the fact that it is the first ever universal IEM that is made for music with a rated accuracy score based on an industrial first scientific sound quality measurement developed and published by Etymotic? ER4 is without a doubt a living legend and will continue to impress many newcomers in the IEM world. More importantly, the series hasn’t lost its relevancy in the fast growing IEM world. There might be other IEM that can do certain things better, but ER4 is still one of the most revealing, detailed while neutral sounding IEM you can ever listen to. In this review, we will be focus on ER4P and the resistor-adapter-transformed ER4S.