HifiMan Jade II Headphone impressions
HiFiMan have recently released an new Electrostatic Headphone with Amplifier called the Jade II.
The team at earphonia.com were privileged to get a short loan time to experience the HifiMan Jade II Electrostatic Headphone and Amplifier.
Below we have shared our impressions:
The amp is a minimal design and pretty heavy, the main enclosures build quality of the amp is very solid with the centre part raised off the ground.
This helps as it gets a little warm at times so the raised base has good airflow around it to help with cooling.
There are not many controls, the front panel just has a power button, 2 headphone outputs and a button to toggle the inputs RCA to balanced and a volume dial.
The volume dial turns easily and I would have preferred a little more resistance to it. Also the input selector button feels a little loose fitting, I would have preferred something tighter with more authority when clicked.
The back of the amp just has the RCA and Balanced input ports.
Along with power socket and voltage calibration for use in different countries.
The Jade II headphone has nice shape and design aesthetic, the drivers colouring changing from a shimmering green, like a dragonfly wing to a purplish tone depending on the light reflecting on it.
I would have preferred the cables that are fixed to the headphone being of better quality as they have a black weaved outer covering that doesn’t appear to be that robust or tightly weaved, at certain angles I can see through them showing the internal insulated wires.
I would have preferred a more secure covering to these cables. The headphones are light in weight considering their size.
But for my head-size the clamp force was a bit too tight and pressed too much against my temple and put pressure on my cheek bone and jaw – so for me this was not the most comfortable for my head size, whether this pressure gets looser, more comfortable over time we will have to wait and see. Or if I had a different headphone pad to the stock ones installed this might help to make it more comfortable.
The sources for feeding the amp impacted the Headphone volume quite a lot and it required quite a bit of input power to get the best from it, after trying a few sources I settled on the Hugo 2 with Cowon Plenue Optical input. I used my crystal cables for the RCA connection.
The Hugo 2 was more than powerful enough to get a strong volume level from the Jade II, I was comfortable with just turning the dial 3 notches.
I left the Headphones running in for around 30 hours, not continually running the Amp, but in 3 blocks of 10 hours – running overnight.
My initial impressions was that the signature has a natural clean character to it. With acoustic instruments very natural and realistic sounding. Pianos carrying weight, lower end bass smooth and with nice texturing.
The following track – Jack Lee, Bob James – Botero – Sphere – shows off a lot of the positive aspects of this headphone, it worked well, sounding intimate and realistic.
Details are rich with good scaling, layering precise and accurately rendered. Bass impact clear and tight sounding with deep lower end depth.
Mid range is organic and slightly warm with a coherent balance across the rest of the spectrum.
Vocals are intimate, sounding realistic and soulful. Staging has a wide style size inline with the rest of the Jade II’s signature.
Upper end contains no harshness or spiking and seem clean and detailed.
The Jade II really did shine with live acoustic music, jazz and scaled well. Especially when using Hi-Res recordings and a powerful source input.
ADDITIONAL NOTE
I didn’t experience any of the problems mentioned on some other posts and users that got to try these at the CanJam shows have also not reported any of these issues, however as I have seen a couple of posts/comments about the safety of this product, I asked HifiMan to officially comment on this as I don’t feel I am qualified to assess this aspect as it is beyond my field of expertise.
They got back to me sharing the following you tube videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDwEbjOFGe8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we5YR3MBlbc
As always I leave it to the readers to do their own additional research.
