JH Roxanne reviews were very misleading and the Beyer T5p even more so.
I'm thinking of getting a JHA Roxanne Universal, so I'm curious about this, care to elaborate?
It was supposed to be released in Jan 2014 and shipped at the end of the month. I preordered it through Moon Audio in mid Jan.
I got it early April with all the delays.
They wouldn't even announce why there were delays. I would only hear it from Moon Audio that there was a delay and that's why he wasn't shipping me anything yet.
He even gave me free 2 day shipping to Canada for the long wait (Good Guy Drew)
I got it and I was hearing a distinct imbalance when I first got it but thought maybe it was the tips or something. Obviously my other audiophile friends wanted to hear it. I showed it to one and he heard something weird but I convinced him that it was probably the tips or something. When I showed it to my other friend and he heard the same imbalance I knew something was up. By then I had them for about a month and I still heard the imbalance a bit even after trying different eartips.
I played around with the balance shift on the Fiio x5 and had to shift it left to fix the balance issue but even then there were problems in the treble. I tried switching the cable sides around but still heard the imbalance in the left side. The drivers / earpiece was defective. I called them using Andy's personal line and he guaranteed me that he'd inspect a brand new pair and ship them out to me. This was about in May. I emailed him my personal info which he requested and waited patiently. A month later I had received nothing in the mail and no email reply. I call back and Angie tells me that he's on vacation and that he hadn't left anything to be sent for me. He went on vacation without sending me the new Roxannes, something that came defective on arrival and that cost $1300 before shipping and taxes.
By the time he finally got back and shipped me the new pair it was July.
Here's a quote from my review over at headfi:
Why did I give this 1/2 a star? Simply because the experience with these has been absolutely awful.
I found out after talking to a few audiophiles about my pair that the left earpiece may be broken in some way. Basically the mids were muffled and sounded off. Very noticeable if you paid attention to it/ know what to listen for. Otherwise it would just sound like something is off overall. This coming in after all the cosmetic defects and delays is REALLY disappointing. I send emails with no response. I call and get connected to Andy who listens to me and tells me he'll send me a pair first thing Monday morning (Monday being May 19th) and that he would quality check it himself. Well here I am updating this on June 12th with no further response and no replacement after confirming by email that he would send me a replacement on May 19th. This has been an overall awful experience dealing with JH for a $1300 pair of earbuds.
I got to try both the new and old pairs and compare them. It really shocked me to see that the build had been completely changed. While the old ones had darker plastic and a more formed look, the new ones were more bulbous with a more transparent plastic and a bulbous look. They sounded like opposites. With the new driver on the left and the old one on the right, the sound on the old one was dark and veiled with the new one being brighter.
They either changed the way they were making the earbuds or they changed the design without telling anyone hoping that they would be rare enough for no one to notice. Either that or my first pair was REALLY screwed up but my initial impressions matched a lot of the initial impressions.
Another thing worth noting is that JH claimed that these Roxannes were going to be the top of the line for the new series. It took some people a year to get their custom versions. Less than a year after the Roxannes were announced, the Angie and Laylas come out. My friend who ordered his custom roxannes (the first friend that I let try my Roxannes) on Black Friday waited until July / August of 2014 to get them and was obviously pissed when he saw them release a "better" model.
Yet another one of my friends visited JH in person before the Freq Phase came out and he asked them "Do you guys have something else coming out soon? I'm going to be pretty pissed if I buy these JH13s and something else comes out."
Literally a month after he got his 13s done, the FP version came out.
Ah that's my rant about JH for now.
