A recent article compelled me to review one of our products, the Cerulean X1.

Now, to align credentials first - I am not a sound engineer, nor am I a hardcore audiophile (I'm maybe in that space between mainstream and hardcore, fine). I was, however, a choral singer in my past life and have transcended this obsession for choral arts performance into other, more eclectic forms of music. Also, I have a handful of conservatory-graduate friends whom I very frequently have cultural and artistic interchanges with. (I really do miss singing with them.)

In short, I'm involved enough. 

And so when I chanced upon Gizmodo.com's article on earphone quality and price levels, I couldn't help but contribute to the exposé.

Matt Buchanan’s gist is, simply, the really good quality earphones start at the $100 range. I agree. 

No one really cares to know what’s inside those little things you put in your ears – it’s an engineering marvel actually. The sound you hear is the end-result of a distribution network happening in your earphone. So when your music is, for the lack of a better term, ‘transported’ to your earphones, your earphones ‘process’ this encrypted (digitalized, converted, etc.) sound into waves or vibrations (which is really what we’re hearing).

Your earphones’ processing capability depends then on two things: 1) raw mats and 2) engineering. Better quality specs (drums, wiring, etc.) naturally cost more to source out, and so do innovative engineering designs (and is the point of difference between serious earphone manufacturers and no-labels). 

I decided to test two earphones competing on the same frequency response (20Hz – 20 Khz) and price levels: my old JBL Reference 410 and iSkin’s Cerulean X1 (conveniently hidden in Chantel’s product/treasure box in the office). 

So I subjected both to a Five-Song Test (in my iPhone 3G): 

Satellite - TV On The Radio, 2004 (Alternative Rock)

Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) – Beyoncé, 2008 (RnB)

The Girl from Ipanema – Stan Getz/Joao Gilberto, 1964 (Bossa Nova)

4 Minutes – Madonna/Justin Timberlake, 2008 (Dance/HipHop)

Il dolce suono mi colpì di sua voce (from Lucia di Lammermoor) – Maria Callas, 1953 (Opera)

VERDICT

Generally, comparing these two – in the context of voice – is like comparing German and Italian vocal techniques. One is enclosed, warmer; the other, forward, bright. 

JBL (the German sound), it seems, is bass focused. The atmospheric quality is muted in all five songs, and you get as a result, a “package” instead of layers of the music. It was especially likeable to hear Single Ladies from it because the beats had a lot more oomph, but fails to give justice to Madonna’s coyingly-intricate song, 4 Minutes (I can barely hear the cow bell amid the electronica). The layers in Satellite were all but homogenized, although if you increase the volume, you get the feel of a bigger – and I use this word loosely, exciting – sound. 

Where JBL falls short, Cerulean X1 surprisingly fills in. The beats are not as flashy (in a hollow way, actually) but it is every bit as heavy - and rich. If you’re the type of listener that places emphasis on melodic lines, chords and textures – especially compositional structures (i.e.: Arvo Pärt, Luciano Berio, Philip Glass and Osualdo Golijov), Cerulean X1 is thoroughly satisfying. 

The pick-up of this earphone is amazing. Especially in the quieter songs (in Joao and Astrud Gilberto’s whispery Girl from Ipanema, Stan Getz's sax sounds libidous), the sound mimics the environment in which it was recorded in. I was able to appreciate the visual imagery that the ‘flapping’ percussion in Satellite was trying to connote and the voice almost had an ethereal, gospel echo. 

The true difference came out when I, at last, listened to Callas’ rendition of Il dolce suono mi colpì di sua voce. 

A burgeoning opera buff myself, I’ve heard this numerous times, in numerous speakers and settings (once live in a mediocre performance). And to my own amazement - next to my parent’s Bose speaker system in Windsor - this has to be the most immersive and projective reproductions of Callas' voice. 

The Cerulean X1, a hidden gem among earphones in the market, gives the exacting listener near-bel canto nuances one can only hear live.