Sound impressions
I’ve been listening to Sharona on and off for almost two months now, taking notes along the way, and also comparing it to other IEMs both similar and very different.
All listening was done with HiBy’s flagship DAPs, RS8 (reviewed here) and R8 II (reviewed here), with a variety of current and older music spanning a wide spectrum of genres, but limited to the music I mostly listen to (so no metal, hard rock, RnB or rap). As such, please gauge my impressions based on my preferences, especially if they differ vastly from yours.
Tonally I find Sharona to be warm-tilted, with a dominant low end that saturates much of the music I listen too – and mostly in a good way. If I were to describe its tonal curve, I’d say U-shaped, though treble is more relaxed than the bass, without significant rolloff, and mids are neither too forward or recessed.
To me, Sharona’s bass presentation makes it a bass-first IEM, but that’s not a pigeonhole it fits into very comfortably either. It’s not often I heap praise on an IEM that lacks dynamic drivers for bass, but even on first listen I could tell that Jerry has managed to blur the lines between the gravitas and texture rendition that makes dynamic driver bass so vital for me, and the unquestionable benefits of speed and tactility you get from balanced armatures.
Listening to Pink Floyd’s delectable intro sequence to Yet Another Movie, the rich bass effects flood the stage, giving it a sense of vastness that permeates throughout the track as the vocals, guitars and drums kick in, not once obscuring definition in the vocals and highlights.
Reb Fountain’s eerie Psyche sets a similar tone, with deep, rich bass strums demonstrating Sharona’s excellent sub bass extension and midbass heft that bolsters the lower mids, adding both size and weight to the notes.
Sharona still falls just short of the knurled ripples I’m used to hearing from the very best dynamic drivers. It also lacks the punchiness of some harder-hitting dynamic driver IEMs like Sony’s IER-Z1R.
On the flipside, the tightness and speed of its BA drivers means Sharona can pull back on the typically longer bass decay of large dynamic drivers, preventing it from sounding muddy or bloated. The result is a honeylike bass that adds a lush quality to music without veiling the details.
This earthiness also carries through to the midrange. Neil Diamond’s gravelly voice in Hello Again is rendered with both a subtle warmth and unerring clarity. Instruments like the piano and drawling synth effects in Daft Punk’s Within are neutral in their placement, but continue to play with a smoothness that makes for a more relaxed listen, and all-the-while the vocals are clear and centred.
Female vocals benefit from Sharona’s gentle rise into the upper mids, Lily Kershaw’s sweetly tortured voice in Pain & More, the title track off her new, brilliantly-melancholic album, sounding both unerringly focused but also achingly emotional. It’s a balance of tone and technique that Sharona manages to strike about as well as any of the most accomplished IEMs I’ve heard, proving yet again that musicality and technicalities are not mutually exclusive.
That upper mid rise doesn’t imply an upper mid peak, as evidenced by Natalie Maine’s shout-free rendition of Bleachers’ Who I Want You To Love. This is another example of Sharona’s clarity-without-sharpness presentation, in spite of its foundational fullness, which makes for a relaxed yet engaging listen that never degrades into fuzziness.
Of course, detail heads may disagree, and those who prefer a cooler sound with minimal bass influence should definitely look elsewhere, but for lovers of tonal richness, weight and gravitas, Sharona sings a very pretty tune indeed.
Which leads us to the treble, often the most contentious of frequency ranges. There’s nothing more off-putting to me that an IEM that floods the stage with treble brightness in relentless pursuit of detail, often at the expense of everything else.
As you’ve probably gathered by now, Sharona does not do this. Instead, you get an effortless delivery of high notes, full of sparkle and more than enough bite, plenty of nuanced detail in the dings and chimes in the mediaeval instruments of Angels of Venice’s Trotto for instance, without any wispiness, zing or etch.
Whether it’s Sharona’s RAU tweeters or Jerry’s slightly conservative treble tuning, whatever is responsible for this silky display of treble goodness should be highly commended in my opinion.
There’s nothing quite like a closely-micced cymbal crash to test my treble tolerance in IEMs, and I’m yet to hear one that makes we wince with Sharona. Yes, I know, real live cymbals can be loud and garish, and some people say they should make you wince, but I just don’t enjoy that type of sound.
Def Leppard’s brilliant drummer, Rick Allan, can be quite spicy on the cymbals with certain IEMs, which sometimes pulls my attention away from the gentler side of iconic tracks like Love Bites, but with Sharona that’s never an issue.
Likewise, if I listened to instrumental jazz more often, I might come across some brassy tracks that push right up to my brightness threshold, but since I don’t, I can only suggest that Sharona’s treble delivery will more than likely blunt the full force of that brassiness – without dulling it.
Technically, Sharona is exactly what I’d expect from a flagship monitor made by one of the foremost sound engineers and IEM designers in the industry. I’m no mastering engineer by any stretch, but I do know a few, and it’s no surprise that they’re enamoured by the precision, cleanliness and resolution Sharona consistently delivers.
To be clear, Sharon’s is not an intimate, highly analytical sound, so if you’re microdetail-obsessed, it might not be the right tool for your job. It’s also not going to give you the immediacy of near-field studio monitors, because the stage it casts is so much bigger and more enveloping.
Imaging and layering are two of Sharona’s biggest technical strengths, as even a casual listen to Yosi Horikawa’s Bubbles will confirm. With busier instrumental tracks, the various elements that make up the track are kept neatly apart, even when there’s plenty of rumbly bass vying for attention.
Not once did I feel like I lost the focus of a main or backing vocal in an instrument melee (Brandi Carlile, The Story), or lost sight of even the slightest sonic effects in electro-heavy tracks (Daft Punk, Contact).
Which naturally suggests Sharona is a very dynamic, very resolving, and very assured IEM – check, check and check on all three. While its gentler, some would even say laid-back delivery doesn’t quite hit you over the head with detail, if you listen with any sort of focus, you’ll find that all the details are there, right where they should be.
In summing up Sharona’s sonic profile, it’s probably easiest to break it down into who I feel this monitor is not going to win over.
If you want a bright, clinical monitor for pinpoint accuracy, without any tonal colour whatsoever, Sharona is not for you. If you want a neutral, restrained bass that stays well away from your midrange and gives right of way to treble brightness, Sharona is not for you either.
Likewise, if you want a dark, almost over-saturated warmth – think smoke-filled basement bar with resonating walls – Sharona won’t be that, despite its fullness and penchant for warmer hues.
However, if you’re after a natural-sounding monitor with timbral and spatial accuracy in spades; or a monitor that expands the stage in all dimensions without sounding disparate or disconnected; or a monitor that recreates texture (almost) as well as some of the best dynamics, with added speed, verve and tightness; this is Sharona in a nutshell.
Continue to select comparisons…
