Aries Sales founded FlipEars with the goal of creating IEMs that offer the insight into music that only a musician can offer: both for musicians using IEMs to monitor their performance and audiophiles listening for enjoyment. The result is a series of IEMs with highly detailed, but musical tunings – many of which also feature switches to enhance specific frequencies. Aether is the entry point into FlipEars line-up, offering the brands signature styling and features in a quad-BA IEM at $699. How does it stack up to the competition?
Build and Design
FlipEars IEMs come in a premium package with the cable, a slightly oversized zip up case, eartips, and, of course, the IEMs themselves. The case has an insert that holds the IEMs nicely in place, but it’s not exactly the most convenient design, so if you’re going to use this case, you’ll probably want to remove the insert so that you can easily store additional items in the case; it’s big enough that you could probably even story a small DAP in there with the IEMs.
The provided cable is a high quality silver-plated copper, with a solid premium feel to it. The IEMs themselves have a resin shell with a fairly typical sort of design. The shell is fairly small, and most people should easily be able to get a comfortable fit with a good seal. Inside you have four balanced armature drivers with a four-way crossover: one each for subbass, bass, mids, and high, and the frequency response can be adjusted to add a bass boost via a single dipswitch on the back of the IEM shells. Does the tech come together to make for great performance?
Sound
Aether has a balanced sound signature that leans towards a soft V-shape, with nice extension into the subbass and upper end. The overall presentation combines detail and musicality with a strong versatility that’s further bolstered by the bass boost switch option. Of all of the IEMs I’ve listened to with switchable options, Aether is one of the few where I thought the two options were equally good – just different – rather than one option being clearly superior to the others.
With the switch off, the bass is tight and clean, providing good fundamentals and a mostly linear extension with solid impact. There’s a good sense of texture to the bass and a clean transition into the midrange. Turn on the switch and there’s a clear elevation in the impact and rumble, along with a general shift in the sound signature towards a warmer, more lush tone.
The midrange offers an impressively natural timbre for an all balanced armature IEM. Vocals have a natural warmth and acoustic instruments are nicely reproduced with a good sense of lifelike ambience in the sound.
With the switch off, some elements of the treble stand out a little more, demonstrating strong resolution and offering a nice helping of sparkle and sizzle. Turning the switch on, allows the bass to overpower the sound signature a bit more, but it leaves the core characteristics of the treble intact.
Aether presents a nice-sized soundstage with a three-dimensional feeling.. The imaging presentation leans more towards proving a cohesive imaging presentation with good separation, but a stronger sense of blending in the space between each element. This sort of imaging lends strongly to genres like rock, jazz, and pop with a lower level of instrumental complexity, but the presentation is still strong for orchestral music and film scores.
As the instruments enter from right to left on “Pharaoh’s Dance” by Miles Davis, you get a tactile sense of each one landing in its place as Aether spaces them out across the stage. There’s plenty of texture in the bass, and good clarity up into the mids, even with the bass boost switch on. Instruments in the upper end, like the electric piano, guitar, and trumpet sound smooth, and ever so slightly rounded off at the top. The layering and blending are generally well-balanced, but with the bass boost off, the stage gets noticeably cleaned up and creates more space and separation between instruments.
Michael Giacchino’s motion picture score for “The Batman” has become a go-to for testing the full range of new headphones in the office, and “Can’t Fight City Halloween” offers a mix of orchestral and electronic layers to unravel, along with big dynamic shifts that can demonstrate the best – or worst – in headphones. In the low-end, Aether provides a nice feeling of pluck from the double-bass along with an ominous rumble, that’s further with the bass switch on. In the treble, there’s some violence in the violins, with some dissonant sections evoking the sensation of nails on the chalkboard – which I think was the composer’s intent. Aether’s great macrodynamics are evident as the song rises, falls, and rises again at its climax.
Genres like pop, rock, hip hop, and metal were some of the best matches for Aether, and a little bit of each comes together in Linkin Park’s “Heavy is the Crown” making for a perfect match. Aether deliver thick guitars, deep bass, and hard hitting dynamics, along with good balance and presence with both the male and female vocals. When the vocals get harsh and in your face, Aether gives you all the texture and grit in the performance. Aether also provides a good sense of the width in the soundstage, especially on the chorus when the backing vocals come in and make the whole thing sound utterly massive.
Comparison: Ice Lab Prismatica, 7th Acoustics Supernova
With all the buzz about bone conduction, tribrids, quadbrids, and the like, I wouldn’t have expected the all-balanced armature style of IEM to have a major resurgence, but it seems like South Asia is still pushing the limits on this style of IEM, with Ice Lab Prismatica ($899) coming out of Hong Kong, 7th Acoustics Supernova ($849) hailing from Indonesia, and FlipEars Aether ($699) originating in the Philippines.
In terms of the included package, Ice Lab seems to be the brand most interested in giving you the “wow” factor, with high quality pack-ins, a great case, and some unique, bespoke aspects to elements like the cable. Aether has the most specious case, but it’s not as premium feeling as the others – and it can be a bit bulky if you’re only carrying one pair of IEMs and eartips.
The sound signatures of the three IEMs are in the same ballpark, but with some clear, noticeable differences between each. Prismatica has the most prominent treble of the three, giving you clearer definition and separation, and more air and space. Both Supernova and Prismatica have a cleaner, tighter bass but less impact and subbass extension. Supernova has the least impact of the three, but also the widest soundstage and best imaging. Prismatica has a wider stage than Aether, but a more diffuse feeling to the imaging, while Supernova balances the space and weight a bit more.
In terms of pure technicality and accuracy, Supernova stands out the strongest, while Prismatica comes in second, offering a little bit more in the way of “fun” in the sound. Aether wins the other end of the comparison, providing the most dynamic, physical performance of the three, and the strongest tuning for rock, pop, hip-hop, and electronic music.
The Bottom Line
Aether offers all around strong performance that particularly shines with more modern genres. The tuning switch gives you the extra flexibility to either enjoy the greater versatility of the standard tuning, or pump up the bass to experience greater warmth and stronger physical impact. Either way FlipEars has provided a an excellent entry point into their IEM lineup.
