Creative Aurvana In-Ear2 Headphones

Full Review

The newly launched Creative Aurvana In-Ear2 headphones is the second Aurvana In-Ear model from Creative.  This new In-Ears promised to have more refined sound from its Balanced Armature driver coupled with acoustic grille design and they definitely offer quality sound.

Features & Design
The Creative Aurvana In-Ear2 has a dark chrome metallic body which looks more elegant and more stylish than the older Aurvana In-Ear. The gold-plated stereo jack plug also has a metallic cap which ensures that the In-Ears would pass the test of time. The Y-shaped Oxygen-Free Copper cable is 120cm long and is of good quality albeit we’d like them to be a bit more flexible. Creative includes a Y-junction slider to tighten the cable that in turn reduces the clutter or cable-noise especially while using them on the move.

Vocals and guitars sounded rich and natural without too overpowering the rest of the frequencies except for the upper mid-range which sounds a bit over-accentuated at times.

Creative uses Balanced Armature driver with acoustic grille design at the back to produce a smoother and more detailed sound with punchy bass. While other brands moved to double or triple armature drivers design, Creative confidently built the In-Ear2 with just the single driver.  The In-Ear2 employs AuraSeal   in-ear design which promises to reduce outside noise up to 95 percent. And it has a frequency range of 15Hz -16kHz, 42 Ohms impedance and 110dB/mW sensitivity.    The package includes six pairs of ear tips of various sizes, a small travel case, cleaning tool and an airplane adapter.

Fitting & Noise Isolation
The Aurvana In-Ear provides a nice fit and the medium sized ear-tips fit the best for our ears. The In-Ears don’t go too deep to the ear-canal but still managed to provide enough tight-fit and sligthly above average isolation. And it was comfortable to use them even after extended period of listening. The Y-junction slider helped reducing cable-noise when tightened up the symmetrical cable, which we think is required especially while on the move as the cable-noise is quite audible. The In-Ear2 with their rubber tips  provided a very good isolation from the ambient noise although they are not as good as what we would have achieved with foam tips.  Nevertheless, the noise isolation was good enough to stop us from cranking up the volume to eardrum-damage level. Despite their acoustic-grille design, we did not notice any leakage of sound even in a quiet environment which makes them a suitable pair of In-Ears when you don’t want to disturb others.

Performance
Burned them in for over 100 hours, the Aurvana In-Ear2 started entertaining us with accurate music reproduction without adding too much coloration. I tried with different sources like iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 64GB, Cowon iAudio D2+, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Acer Aspire One Netbook. To bring more details out of  the audio, I also used the FiiO E5 headphones amplifier. The Aurvana In-Ear2  are not the easiest to drive with most low-powered multimedia phones but they sing well while playing with iPod or iPhone.
The first thing I noticed was the rich and crispy mids, that too, without sounding too forward nor recessed. Vocals and guitars sounded rich and natural without too overpowering the rest of the frequencies except for the upper midrange which sounds a bit overaccentuated at times. Listening to guitar-heavy music  was a treat. Going further up in the frequency curves ,  the In-Ear2 provided a  sufficient amount of highs distinctively. They are not particularly bright, but articulate enough to let you hear the musical notes and instruments. However, they also at times become a little too dry and tad sharp while we expected them to sound smoother, brighter  and more seductive.  Besides, we also felt the upper mids a bit overpowering the upper range of frequencies which made them sound a bit shrill . This is not a big issue for rock or heavy metal music as the Aurvana In-Ear2 sounded amazing with these  genres of music. However, for  jazz and classical, the Aurvana In-Ear2 did not sound as smooth and transparent as we wanted them to be.  For the bass, the Aurvana In-Ear2 delivered punchy bass with our most of the players I tested with. They did not sound miraculously deep, tight and big, but good enough to let you feel the bass. Listening to David Guetta’s On the Dancefloor, the bass was deep and punchy but the overall sound signature is slightly mid-focused. The highs presence was felt but a tad smaller than we’d like while the mids sounded rich and crunchy.  Because of their good-revealing nature, the In-Ear2 needs to be paired with decent quality source and play lossless or at least high bitrates compressed audio.

Soundstage is great on the Aurvana In-Ear2; we could distinctly locate each instruments on the tracks we played. Stereo separation was also impressive . Overall, this armature driven Creative In-Ear2 offered good quality sound that will let you hear many details you missed out with ordinary in-ears headphones. The clear mids and highs with sufficient amount of bass are what it offers. Our only gripe would be the rather dry and sharp highs with slightly overpowering upper midrange. But in the end, the Creative Aurvana In-Ear2  delivered a quality sound that is richer and fuller than most In-Ears in this price range.

Bottom Line

The Creative Aurvana In-Ear2 is a very good sounding pair of In-Ears that deliver rich and crispy mids with sufficient amount of bass and highs, this makes them best suited for rock or guitar-heavy music.  They are beautifully designed and came with host of useful accessories. For Rs 5,999, they are truly a very good sounding pair of In-ears.