I have always been a big fan of “earbud” style earphones and have always preferred them over IEM’s (inner ear monitors). Maybe it was because they were the first type of earphones I was exposed to. My first set came with a sony walkman tape player, I always consider them to be more comfortable and they tend to just disappear after wearing them for awhile and you just get the music.
I understand they have poor isolation and tend to have less bass compare to IEM’s but the advantages far outweigh their disadvantages. With good earbud style earphones you get a much better and bigger sound stage, the music sounds less congested and more open and airy like full size open back headphones. To me this is my number one priority when selecting earphones/headphones.
I have always kept an eye out on new earbud models that gets released just to see what improvements have been made in this space. Unfortunately recent years since IEM’s became really popular less and less vendors are making earbud style earphones and are all moving to IEM’s or full size headphones.
Than I found about this company called venture electronics through massdrop who did a $5 drop off for their entry level VE monk earphones. I was quite sceptical of them due to the price, how good can a pair of earphones that cost $5 be? I will write a separate review on the VE monks. As you can see I was more than impressed with the VE monks to fork out ~$120 and purchased the VE Asura 2.0s. They were the mid range earphones from Venture Electronics product range.
Purchase link: https://www.veclan.com/engappliance_sel_one?eng_ApplianceVo.eac_id=5
I have owned these earphones for over a year now and here is my review of what I think of them.
Sound Quality
The sound stage on these are incredible, it probably has the widest sound stage of all my earphones/headphones, more than sennheiser hd6xx (650), more than the koss ESP/95x (950), more than the hifiman he400s much more than the sennheiser MX980.
They sound more like open back headphones than earphones. To really enjoy and take advantage of these earphones you need to treat them like open back headphones where you need a quite space at home to really hear all the details they offer.
The mids is the next best thing about this earphones, they are extremely neutral and no way emphasised in anyway. Male and female vocals comes across very realistic and positioned not too forward and not too back in your head when listening. The imaging I would say is near perfect.
The treble can come across as a bit fatiguing especially when the recording is sub-par. There is no damping or smoothing out the treble. It is not emphasised in anyway you get a lot of detail coming through with excellent recordings but if the recording contains any harshness/roughness in the treble it comes through clearly.
The bass is probably the most disappointing part of these earphones. I think they are even less than the VE monks. You can improve the bass by using the supplied foam pads to give it better isolation but that tend to colour the mid range and treble and affect the sound stage. If you are a big fan of bass or expect at least the bass to be neutral you will be severely disappointed.
These earphones are best suited for acoustic, jazz, classical music, 70’s/80’s rock, heavy metal. Any electronic or music that has any emphasis with bass will not sound good with these earphones.
Build
The build quality is quite disappointing as they are almost identical to the $5 monks, same plastic housing but now with an upgraded cable. Guess the improvements they spent are on all the things your eyes can’t see and they leave it for your ears to experience the improvements.
After a year of use the cable has started to split apart, i have added a new heat shrink wrap to keep the cable in one piece. But it really needs a new cable. So be aware of this one issue to consider before purchasing. Re-cabling is not too difficult but you will need to solder the new cable on.
Final Conclusion
Even with the slight flaws with the build quality and severe lack of bass I still highly recommend these earphones if you are a big fan of earbud type earphones. These have been my go to earphones as the standard to beat for any new earphones/headphones I get. There is nothing in my collection that beats it on sound stage.
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