audiosplitz: Jays

IT Show 2016 - Portable Music Roundup

March 12, 2016

One of the quarterly consumer tech shows is now in full swing at Suntec Convention Centre from 10 to 13 Mar 2016.

Wait no more!
Check out our roundup of portable audio gizmos at the IT Show 2016 that is going for steal.

Wireless Earphones

Earin
Price: SGD 329 (from SGD 349)
Features - Totally wireless (ie. no cables) / Trend setter / With charging capsule
Location - audiosplitz / Treoo (6571)

Jabra Rox Wireless
Price: SGD 128 (from SGD 168) with Free Magnetic Pouch
Features - Wireless / Dust and water proof
Location - Best (8245) / Harvey Norman (6138) / Nubox (309)

Wireless Headphones

Sennheiser URBANITE XL Wireless
Price: SGD 419 with Free Gift of either OCX 686 Sports or PMX 686 Sports wired earphones (each valued SGD 149)
Features - Over-ears comfort / Wireless or wired / Touch controls / NFC
Location - Sennheiser

Sony MDR-1ABT
Price: SGD 399 (from SGD 499)
Features: Over-ears comfort / Wireless or wired / Touch controls / NFC
Location: Treoo (6571)

Noise Canceling
Bose QuietComfort 20 (QC 20)
Price: SGD 399 (from SGD 499)
Features: Kick-ass noise canceling / Wired / Aware button for toggling ambient sound level
Location: Atlas Warehouse Sale (336)

Sports Earphones (Wired / Wireless)
Bose SoundSport In-Ear
Price: SGD 99 (from SGD 219)
Features: Wired / Great value / Comfortable StayHear tips
Location: Atlas Warehouse Sale (336)

Jaybird X2 Wireless
Price: SGD 229 (from SGD 259)
Features: Wireless / Excellent sound / Great fit / Comply Foam tips
Location: audiosplitz / Treoo (6571)

Sony NWZ-WS413
Price: SGD 149 with Free Casing
Features - Dust and Waterproof (you can swim with it!) / 4GB memory / No external music device needed
Location - Sony (8115)

Wired Earphones
Jays a-JAYS Five
Price: SGD 108 (from $138) for Android / iOS
Price: SGD 69 (from $138) for Windows
Features - Great value / Great bass / Dedicated in-line remote for device type
Location - Treoo (6571)

Wired Headphones
Klipsch Reference R6i On-Ear
Price: SGD 175 (from SGD 199) for 1 pair purchase promo at 10% off
Price: SGD 169 (from SGD 199) for 2 pairs purchase promo at 15% off.
Features - Very lightweight / Great bass / iOS compatible remote
Location - Best (8245) / Challenger (8321) / epiCentre (8101) / Harvey Norman (6138) / Nubox (309)

Speakers
UE BOOM 2
Price: SGD 269 (from SGD 319)
Features - Wireless / 360 degree type / 15h battery life
Location - Best (8245) / EpiCentre (8101) / Nubox (309)

Headphones

Jays u-JAYS - First Look

March 08, 2016

In-Ears

a-JAYS Five - Bass machine

May 01, 2015

I received this pair of earphones as a gift.
Or should I say...
I obtained the Logitech Ultimate Ears 600vi as a gift.

I was actually quite pumped up over the UE model itself. However, due to the UE being able to only support iOS devices for its in-line controller and the fact that I had the Samsung Galaxy S4, an Android device, I decided to make a swap at the store. Admittedly, I was contemplating the Sennheiser MM 70s, what I initially thought as an Android ready equivalent for its award-winning CX 300-II. A brief test comparison with the a-JAYS Five gave me quite surprising results.

To cut the long story short, let's just say I settled for this model.
Nuff talk. Let's delve in.

Design

Let's start with the box. The exterior actually is a thin cardboard box that requires the user to rip the rather well designed exterior to shout to everyone that it has been used. The next step requires the vertical lifting of the square shaped box to reveal the hard black circular box flanked at the bottom by two somewhat flimsy boxes with the self-explanatory labels 'Silicone sleeves' and 'Cable clip'. The great part is that you get five different sizes of silicone flanges to fit any permutation of ear size possible. Upon opening that really solid plastic box pop out the a-JAYS Five earphones with a tightly wound cable punctuated by the earphones proper smack in the centre of the box.

On taking them out, the first thing that strikes one is the stylish tangle-free flat type cable that feels really good to the touch. Going from tip to tip, there is the L-shaped plug on one side to connect with your audio equipment. Somewhere down the middle, the cable is punctuated by the three button (and the actuation of each button is pretty solid) in-line control cum microphone. At the other end, the earpieces themselves are two unassuming rubber pieces that connect to your choice of silicone sleeve via a protruding aluminum tip. Overall, the feeling gotten is that these are a pair of really solid and well built earphones and that much care has been taken in designing the components right down the box opening experience.

Features
Jays Headset Control is a native app that can be downloaded and installed from Google Play. This merits a review in itself, which I shan't cover now. What can be said is that you can set the default music player, set the buttons to actuate based on the latency that you set between two or three button presses (called Click Delays), check for conflicting apps, yada yada. Theoretically, an amazing app to have for any earphones.

Configuring them to my Samsung Galaxy SII (running on Android v2.3) was a blast as everything functioned as it should have. I could set Google Play Music as the default music player, tweak the top and bottom buttons to change track forward and backward. By contrast, running this app on the Samsung Galaxy S4, a more recent model running on Android v4.4 was a head spinner. The top and bottom buttons failed to work, effectively constraining usage of these solely to volume control. Uninstalling and reinstalling the app yielded no better results. Oh and installing the app effectively removes the lock screen music controls of your Android. Do take note all ye Android users. This could have been considered a great unique selling point of these earphones if implemented correctly.

Performance
The audio is quite awesome, bass-wise, though I would hesitate to say mind blowing.

Playing Take That's dance-floor themed These Days allowed a sampling of the thumping bass to the rather tinny vocals of Barlow, Owen and Donald belting 'Take me back to where it all began'. Sarah Brightman's It's a Beautiful Day, never quite convinced me as the vocal clarity was always muffled. Once again, the highlight is the punchy bass punctuating the straining vocals. However, putting things in the bigger perspective, the overall treble beats the stock Samsung or Apple in-ears anytime and this can't be emphasized more.

Fitting-wise, even though the silicone sleeves were stuffed right into the ears, they did give the impression they were rather loose. On walking, they constantly needed to be placed back in the ears to ensure the bass did not escape. On that same note, the cable clip is vital when walking. Just place it under the Y-shaped connector and fit it to your shirt and presto, no more annoying cable rustling sounds.

Aiwa

Top 5 Budget Earphones

March 27, 2015

After using earphones for many years now, there comes a point where a look back is needed.

Needless to say, over the span of 15+ years, there is absolutely no way to do an apple to apple comparison of every single pair of earphones ever tried. Why so? Through wear and tear, some are discarded and new ones gotten. Some sold, more are bought. I decided to compile a list based on the top earphones that went easy on the budget.

This is a list of a bunch 'o kickass budget (< S$100) earphones that I have had the pleasure of using at one point in my life. They brought back great memories as the experience was so darn awesome. They may not necessarily have the best sound quality but each has a unique selling point that justifies its place in this list.

Let's commence.

1. Aiwa HP-V161

S$11 a pop. Does the price make the earphone? In this case, nope. It is excellent for bass lovers and unique due to the silicon layer with a tiny layer of air on the earphones themselves to provide comfort and a certain degree of sound isolation. These earphones are great, on one condition - That your ear holes are tiny enough to afford a snug fit. My situation was that these plugs were rather tiny so I had to adjust them continually whenever they dropped out and this happened pretty often. When fitted right, the bass kicked in nicely.

S$11? Incredulous ain't it?

2. Creative EP-630

I was using a pair of these with my iPod mini in the mid-2000s and what I clearly recall is that this was an amazing pair of earphones for the S$40 dished out. What you get - well balanced sound with great sound isolation. This was my default pair of earphones for almost a year for a reason. I can't really find that many flaws with a model at this price range. Perhaps the only niggling issue was the cord swishing in the wind when walking, but this is inherent in most in-ear earphones. They are still in production so do get your paws on a pair if you can.

Great value. Great sound.

3. Jays a-JAYS Five

A controversial choice? Perhaps. However, these are a decent pair of in-ears that make up my current choice. Are they the best choice for sound quality? The highs aren't the best. The bass is certainly decent enough.

I give them credit for two things:

1. This is an Android-ready pair of earphones. Not many manufacturers would bother an attempt to dedicate a pair to Android for some reason. Besides the iOS ready earphones, all the other so-called Android-ready units only have an analogue volume control.

2. They actually came up with a mobile app called Jays Headset Control for customization of the 3 buttons on the in-line remote. The downside is it seems they aren't really updating it. It worked great on Android v2.3 but on v4.4, the support for the top and bottom buttons seems to have vanished. Nonetheless, great concept. Other manufacturers should start to develop similar apps for their earphone ranges.

Android ready? Hell yes

4. Sony MDR-EX70SL

The key unique selling point of the EX70SL was that the earbuds fit right into your ears. There were small, medium and large sizes for customization to your ear hole size. The 'SL' meant that the cord could be either S (short cord) or linked to an extended cord to make it L (long cord), ideal for MP3 or Minidisc users sporting a remote. Sound quality is incredible. The tech specs mention 6 - 23000 Hz though these are probably marketing specs to emphasize the strength on the lower frequencies and yeah, the bass delivers.

If iPhones sparked a revolution for phones, the Sony MDR-EX70SL did the same for in-ear earphones. While I am not sure if Sony are the folks who came up with the first pair of in-ears, they certainly popularized them. If you look into any shop selling earphones these days, most likely 80% are all of the in-ears category. That is the impact this model had.

The model that started it all

5. Sony MDR-E888LP

The emphasis of the E888LP was the sound quality. These were the top-of-the-range earphones of Sony's earphones catalogue. The break-in of the earphones took a while. The initial experience was that it was really nothing all that fantastic. However, after a month or so of usage, the delivery started to kick in and the audio coming in from the high and the mid-range certainly made an impact. They are great in the indoor environment with little ambient sound. Bring them to use in a train and that experience suddenly degrades by a lot. The E888LP was the EX70SL's complement to a certain extent. They appeared around the same time period. The former sparkled in the highs while the latter was a bass hitter. Regardless, this was an iconic pair.

Expensive? Damn right. Great sound quality though.

Merit goes to:

Sennheiser CX 300-II

Xiaomi Mi In-Ear Headphones

Aiwa

1998 in MiniDiscs - The good times

October 13, 2013

Earlier this February, Sony stopped producing MiniDisc players.

Yet another incredibly sad moment, I must say. MDs were a part and parcel of my life in the late 1990s to the early 2000s.

I never made it a point to transition the music device from my humble but reliable cassette player, Sony Walkman WM-FX511, to the CD player. Somehow, CD players felt rather large. No matter how good manufacturers made them, the size of these music devices were always limited by the size of the storage media, the Compact Disc. Sony and Panasonic made some really slim and elegant players but somehow, big was still the word that came to mind.

Instead, jumping directly to the MiniDisc format seemed to be ideal. It seemed to hold quite some potential for the future. As incredulous as this comment may seem in 2013, you have to understand how things functioned in 1998.

MD portables actually being portable
In 1998, Sony and Sharp were the dominant players in portable recorders. Sony had released the Sony MZ-R55, the first genuine disc sized recorder. All their previous releases were rectangular blocks so a square-sized, MD-shaped contraption represented quite a welcome change. Sharp was just a little earlier in coming up with MD-sized units such as the MD-MS701 in 1997 and looked set to continue the trend with their MS721/722 models released in '98. All this pointed to increasingly MiniDisc-sized recorders and players. The smaller they get, the more attractive they get. Sounds the same for every tech device for that matter (TVs excluded).

Affordability
MD portables were getting increasingly more affordable. If recollection serves well, Sony's MZ-R50 / R30 models were in the region of SGD500 - 600+. The new portables from Sony and Sharp were hitting the upper 400/lower 500 levels. As with all technology, once increasingly established, prices drop due to ease of manufacturing, increasing parts availability, consumer acceptance, etc.

Digital Love
At this point in time, what could allow digital playback for a recording enthusiast? I'm the kind to actually listen to radio and actually record music from there with a trusty cassette deck. CDs certainly couldn't perform this function. There were Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) formats but DAT was not very consumer-ish and DCC didn't really represent a threat to MiniDiscs. Somehow, the association for DCC was with Philips only and MD seemed to be taking off with Sony, Sharp, Panasonic all joining the fray. So MDs for digital recording/playback? Why not?

MP3 begins
MP3s were only just starting out and MP3 players were very 'underground' should I say? People were just starting to figure out how to download Cher's Believe ie. where to get the the music, how to download the music, how to listen to the music. Not many were thinking of what portable device could play MP3s. Furthermore, memory prices were crazy. One of the first players, the Diamond Rio PMP300, was just introduced with 32MB of storage. That was insane. With this capacity, realistically we were looking at 3 or 4 songs max? That said, MP3s and their players were really not a viable option in 1998.

So with this, why not jump on the MD bandwagon? It was quite a straightforward decision. This was the beginning of wonderful memories with using MiniDiscs, at least until an equally attractive and compact proposition in the form of the iPod mini popped out in 2004. However, for five to six long years, the MiniDisc was a wonderful format for recording.