JVC HA FW10000 in-ear Headphones Test

JVC HA FW10000 in-ear Headphones Test

JVC HA-FW10000 in-ear headphones Test

High-end in-ear headphones can have a completely different design. Some manufacturers are experimenting with hybrid models, others put 5-7 armature drivers in each earphone, and still, others manage to pack planar emitters into a mini-format.

JVC decided to take a different path in creating their best in-ear model, combining high technology with Japanese traditions and the main canons of the High End.

Reason for celebration

Until recently, As it turned out, the company has been continuously and very actively developing this line of business for many years, thanks to which in its homeland, in Japan (and in a number of European countries), JVC as a headphone brand is in the top sales, confidently competing with such monsters as JBL, Sony, Audio-Technica, and Apple. To achieve such results on cheap models for the mass market alone will not work - this requires a solid technological base, and JVC has it.

At the heart of JVC's modern hi-fi line is Wood technology - and its choice was not accidental. JVC had plenty of experimental models based on other technologies, and among them, there is even an EISA award winner. At the moment, the company also produces very interesting models based on other technologies, but they mainly belong to the middle price segment - and all older models are included in the Wood series.

JVC HA FW10000 in-ear Headphones Test

The current flagship of the line - the JVC HA-FW10000 model - was released for the 10th anniversary of the branded "wooden" series. And although this happened a long time ago, in 2018, it is still the main reference in terms of quality and the main donor of technology for other models.

Love for nature

The first association that arises when you hear the phrase "wooden diffuser" is, of course, Wood Cone acoustics and popular JVC stereos that were equipped with it. It was a real High End in its format - and the memories of the Wood Cone series are extremely positive. But it is one thing to make a sufficiently large speaker cone for acoustics out of veneer, and it is quite another to implement the same technology in microformat.

At the heart of the headphone speaker of the Wood series is a completely traditional diffuser made of PET plastic. First, a carbon coating is applied to it, which increases the overall rigidity of the structure. After that, the thinnest cut of natural wood is glued onto the working surface of the diffuser - only 50 microns thick. This layer of wood is thinner and more transparent than tissue paper, but at the microscale of headphones, it can significantly change both the resonant properties and the transient response of the cone.

JVC HA FW10000 in-ear Headphones Test

There are many headphones (including those in the JVC range) that are equipped with carbon-coated cones. As a rule, such headphones sound very accurate and dynamic, have an excellent attack, but the nature of the sound of such models tends to be analytical and studio.

Some manufacturers manage to make headphone diffusers not from wood, but from its derivatives - paper or pulp. The effect is in many ways similar to what paper speakers give in acoustics: on the one hand, the sound turns out to be rich in timbre, lively and velvety, but at the same time, the insufficiently dense and rigid texture of the material does not allow achieving ideal clarity, composure and dynamism - in the entire range there is not enough detail, and the bass is fuzzy and blurry.

The combination of wood and carbon base significantly increases the stiffness of the cone. At the same time, the wooden surface gives the same advantages as paper, but, being denser, it allows you to avoid blurring and fuzzy sound both at the macro level and in small nuances.

In addition, a natural cut of a tree is a monolith formed by fibers of different densities, which have completely different ability to propagate resonances. Because of this, the wooden part of the cone absorbs resonances over a wide frequency range, helping to avoid the resonant peak that plastic, carbon, metal or metallized and other cones made of a homogeneous material inevitably have.

JVC HA FW10000 in-ear Headphones Test

In addition to wood core cones, the speakers boast a solid titanium cabinet with an integrated acoustic lens, a copper-plated aluminum voice coil and a powerful magnet system. The inner frame of the JVC HA-FW10000 case is also made of titanium, and the outer part is made of Japanese maple with repeated impregnation with the traditional Urushi lacquer, which creates a durable coating with high hardness and wear resistance.

Sound tuning is also done with natural materials obtained in the traditional way - the same as centuries ago. The headphone shells are partially filled with sound-absorbing materials: silk fibers and Japanese craft paper Awa Washi. Silk adjusts the amount of treble, and paper is responsible for the bass.

The solution is extremely interesting and makes it possible to control the frequency response with high accuracy - everything depends solely on the degree of perfectionism that the developers will show because you only need to choose the ideal ratio of materials.

All this was not enough for JVC engineers, and they decided to take control of the movement of the airflow. The part of the housing opposite the speaker cone is covered with small bulges-dots that disperse sound that does not enter directly into the sound duct.

This minimizes distortion and coloration of the sound caused by reflections inside the cabinet. Inside the branded ear pads, in the channel through which the sound exits the headphone sound duct, there are small dents, which are also designed to dissipate re-reflections.

Design and High End

It is easy to see that the approach to sound tuning is in line with the best traditions of High End. A classic transducer that combines natural wood and high-tech carbon fiber, the use of craft materials for precise frequency response correction, the widespread fight against reflections - all this indicates the developers' attention to the smallest details. And there are many more nuances that reinforce this impression.

Since the JVC HA-FW10000 model was released for the anniversary of the Wood series, it received a special design: the headphones are an allusion to the clarinet - a woodwind instrument with numerous metal parts. The hint as a whole is obvious: it is understood that the Wood headphones are also a kind of musical instrument that has its own character, but at the same time accurately plays the notes.

JVC HA FW10000 in-ear Headphones Test

As a result, the design of the headphones resembles a clarinet valve. But what initially looks like an original design move is, in fact, a means of combating parasitic vibrations. Firstly, due to the abundance of metal, the headphones have a fairly large mass. As with acoustics, this makes them inert, unable to absorb speaker energy and color the sound.

Secondly, an external module with a cable connector not only helps to arrange it in a convenient way - it contains a shock-absorbing insert inside, which isolates the standard MMCX coaxial connector from the case. In this way, vibrations from the cable are damped outside the main body of the earpiece.

The cables themselves are also unusual: their conductors have a multi-strand construction, and in the center of each is a silk thread that acts as a mechanical damper and a means of removing static charge. The entire length of the cable is 4-core.

The wires leading to the plus and minus of each channel extend from one connector to another and do not have any additional connections or ramifications in the signal path. The copper conductors are naturally oxygen-free and highly purified, and the double insulation creates good protection not only against mechanical damage, but also against the microphonic effect and the transmission of microvibrations.

JVC HA FW10000 in-ear Headphones Test

Perfectionism, manifested in every detail, is the main difference between High End class devices and all the others. In pursuit of absolute perfection, developers strive to eliminate the slightest negative factors at any cost and, as a result, get the opportunity to raise the sound quality one or more steps higher.

And that is why the JVC HA-FW10000 is an absolute, 100% High End. But enough about hardware and philosophy. It's time to talk about sound.

Hear it all

The first acquaintance with the JVC HA-FW10000 model is reminiscent of a fascinating attraction, the explanation of which should be sought somewhere in the depths of science called "psychoacoustics".

At the very beginning, the sound is completely unimpressive and even confusing - the bass is not enough, the upper ones also seem to be lacking, the middle is a bit bright, and it is not clear what is happening at all. As if you are listening to a recording of the mid-60s on a tube radio of the same year of release.

A few minutes pass, the hearing adapts - and the sensations change radically. Bass, it turns out, is in place - it is exactly as much as necessary quantitatively, and, when required, the headphones confidently play very low notes.

There are enough upper frequencies and a feeling of air - at the same time, they do not click, do not drill the brain, as happens with rebar models, but they also do not feel squeezed or failed. The middle is fantastically detailed, lively and realistic, with an incredible study of timbres and the smallest shades.

JVC HA FW10000 in-ear Headphones Test

And then there is another change in perception: it is worth sorting out 5-10 familiar tracks - and persistent addiction to the sound begins. These are no longer strange Japanese headphones with an incomprehensible sound, this is “my charm”, which no one under any circumstances can take away. The reason for this is the amazing ability of the JVC HA-FW10000 to reproduce literally any music very tasty and juicy.

I started with the first Creedence Clearwater Revival album, for which I thought these headphones should have been perfect - and they did! Then, somehow imperceptibly, through a kaleidoscope of genres and eras, I got to the album “Nebylo” by the Tequilajazzz group - and the sound was still exceptionally interesting, detailed and accurate. There were no thoughts that the headphones were not suitable for listening to Tequila. Quite the opposite: the JVC HA-FW10000 was perfect for this!

Along the way, I managed to listen to literally everything, including very intricate genres. The playlist included new age, eurodance, metal, progressive of all sorts, classics of different scales, experimental electronics, the notorious Japanese drums and a ton of free jazz. In a word - everything that only had enough imagination.

And as a result, absolutely everything (even drums) was very interesting to listen to. The music was absolutely natural, exciting and realistic. Any live recording literally breathed energy, immersed in the atmosphere and did not let go of attention for a second. In a word - mysticism and witchcraft, not otherwise.


Stunning detail, wide frequency range, limitless dynamic possibilities and a specific presentation of music led me to the only right decision - to test the magical properties of the model on an impartial measuring stand that cannot be deceived by these high-end tricks of yours!

measurements

On the frequency response graph, three unusual moments immediately catch your eye. The first is the absolute linearity of the characteristic right up to 2 kHz. I have never seen such a smooth schedule of such duration before. Usually the frequency response is already trying to bend somewhere in the region of 200-300 Hz, and for all headphones it begins to noticeably drift away around 1 kHz or earlier. This is pure physics - in these areas, the influence of the headphone case, the ratio of the internal volume and the load chamber that the listener's ear creates, etc. affect.

Here we see only pathetic attempts to break the frequency response somewhere in the 500–1000 Hz section, which the engineers successfully stopped. Looking at this, one would assume that the 3kHz boost was done absolutely consciously and intentionally.

Usually they try to fail this frequency response zone in order to avoid bright coloring in the midrange (exactly the effect that I heard at the beginning), however, if the developers were able to reach a perfectly even graph up to 2 kHz, the task of muffling this hump was hardly too heavy for them. 

The second unusual moment is a generous dose of high frequencies around 15 kHz. Usually, dynamic emitters have little left there, or several sharp peaks and dips are observed at once - here the peak is one and quite wide. In addition, the opinion is broken into small chips about this peak that the tree is capable of producing only a soft, pleasant middle and no high frequencies - here they are, normal upper ones, not inferior in level to the midrange / bass range, the very “air” that was noticeable at listening.

The third and most surprising phenomenon I rechecked several times on the stand, because it looked more like a technical error than a real measurement result. In the graph below, you can see the raw measurement results of different types of headphones. The software smoothing function was not applied to these graphs, which is why we can observe sawtooth distortion in the frequency response in the high-frequency and partially in the low-frequency range.

I will not name specific headphone models - I will only say that they are all of the medium-high segment and they were randomly selected from the general mass. All in-ear and many full-size models give just such a picture.

Smoothing the frequency response graph with a step of 1/24 octave is used in order to be able to trace the middle line of the frequency response, which we perceive - after all, the human ear ignores all these “saws”, generalizing and averaging the result.

And now take a closer look at the frequency response graphs of the JVC HA-FW10000 headphones at the very beginning of this section. I did not apply the smoothing function to them. If you look closely to the right edge, you can see a slight tremor in the region of 18-20 kHz, and there are barely noticeable waves in the bass range. Everything else looks almost flawless. How is this possible? Either magic or the wood-carbon-plastic sandwich is really not prone to resonance. From the word "absolutely".

As for the graph of harmonic distortions, JVC HA-FW10000 is trying to convince us that they are not the product of magical forces or the creation of an alien civilization. With a very good, but achievable with real headphones, distortion corridor of 0.25 ... 0.1% in the 60–2,000 Hz section, the graph dances fervently in the bass zone, rising locally to 3–4%.

Yes, and the notorious hump of the frequency response at 3 kHz is accompanied by a hump-clone on the distortion graph - did you still fail? Thus, at least by distortion, we can conclude that the headphones were still made by people - and they are not 100% perfect. But only 98-99%.

Concluison

JVC HA-FW10000 is exceptionally original and original headphones: both in terms of appearance and in terms engineering solutions. In technological terms, this is a whole exhibition of achievements - after studying the model in detail, even in the High-End paradigm, it begins to seem that half of the bells and whistles are redundant.

However, it is enough just to listen to these headphones to believe in absolutely all the audiophile excesses that the JVC HA-FW10000 is filled with. It is completely unclear what exactly creates all this magic. I don’t even want to change the cable to an alternative one (for example, balanced). What if the magic disappears?

PROS

extremely transparent and expressive sound with fantastic resolution, spectacular design, popular type of MMCX cable connectors, almost perfect frequency response

CONS

the headphones are heavy, and the price tag will make even an experienced and wealthy portable person worry

OFFICIAL SITE

JVC HA-FW10000

JVC HA FW10000 Specifications

Transmitter: dynamic, 11mm carbon-coated dome with wood bezel

Frequency range: 6-52,000 Hz

Impedance: 16 ohm

Sensitivity: 102 dB

Maximum power: 200mW

Cable: OFC 4n with MMCX connectors

Weight: 21.5 g

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