My Birthday Present Creative Aurvana

It is my birthday today, and my wife has been asking me what I would like for a birthday present.

On the same day we happened to walk by the Creative store at Marina Square Singapore and they were having a clearance sale, with my wife, parent-in-law an my sister and brother in law.

It looked like my brother in law was interested in wireless speakers, so I went to look at in-ear-monitors. There was this 'new' series of earphones that I have not seen from Creative before. Aurvana and Aurvana 2's physical design look similar to a generic Etymotic look. Aurvana 3 has a similar design to my Westone One.

Not knowing that Creative has any range of personal solution for higher end audio reproduction products, my first reaction was to regard them with amusement, almost like 'small boys trying to share the market with the big boys'.

However, I took a listen the phones and to my amazement it was really good! I played back a few of my own tracks and some commercial tracks (from some genres including soundtracks, smooth jazz, pop). The Aurvana 2 certainly handles them well and re-creates the frequencies and detail beautifully. I am a little guilty to say that I like the slightly punch bass (which would probably spoil my tracks if I mix with them, since I am inclined to mix with a slightly heavier bass). But this will definitely be good for an everyday enjoyment as well as an alternative quality control monitors for my music.

Aurvana 2 in-ears are certainly capable of matching up to my Klipsch ProMedia (SGD175 3 years ago) and Westone One (SGD215 1 year ago). Klipsch ProMedia is a bit muffled at the top and heavy at the bottom. So I would tend to compare the quality of the Aurvana 2 with my Westone One. The difference between their quality are really close.

I did not consider the Aurvana 3 since I could not get a good fit with the design and the size of the ear buds on the display set. I find that Westone designs fit better to my ears.

Aurvana 2 has a regular price tag of SG$125, but because of the ongoing sale, it is now going for SG$79. Doing a check on Aurvana 2 on Amazon global gives a price of US$49.99. (Aurvana 3 costing $175, is now going for $125 at the Creative store at Marina Square Singapore).

Creative Aurvana 2 is definitely good value for money, and I plan it as a replacement for my Klipsch ProMedia in-ear set (which is a valentine's day gift also from my wife, but its been abused quite badly, needing a replacement).

Also worth mentioning is another in-ear product on display at The Creative HS930i was also on display, and it was only going for SG$40. To me this is a really tremendous deal. The sound quality and sonic reproduction slightly pales in comparison to the Aurvana 2, but for a price tag like that

So here's some more pictures I took when I unboxed the product later on at home.

Pleasant surprise! Aurvana series of earphones won the Singapore RedDot Design Award in 2010.
I guess the series is not so 'new' after all :)

 

The Aurvana product team has done a good job here.

They've added accessories that are expected of products for their Aurvana of a similar class. 

Included accessories are, a semi-hard case to house the phones, 3 sizes of ear-buds (2 sets per size), a cleaning tool to clean out dirt from hard to reach corners of the unit. The most impressive inclusion is a flight adaptor for the audio jacks found on aeroplanes. 

Good work, Creative!

The in-ears has a simple but stylise design. They remind me of bullets :)

For further reading and reviews, I found another article that reviews the Aurvana 2
http://www.audioholics.com/headphone-reviews/creative-aurvana-in-ear-2-earbuds