To some extent this is a case of “third time’s a charm” – but to a large extent we are befuddled. Today we review the Wicked Audio Empire earphones in the Bones configuration. The Empire model is the top of the line earphone from Wicked Audio, but not from Empire Brands (that comes Friday in case you are wondering…) Despite the mass confusion and loss of thought that regarding these headphones we do believe that these quintessentially define what Wicked Audio set out do and what it did: challenge Skullcandy.
Out of the Box
Even before you pull these out of the box it’s clear these are made to compete pound-for-pound against one company. The box features the normal Wicked artwork including the ever popular font, combination of metallic and matte and that ever popular painting of the words, “Lifetime Warranty.” Inside you find the headphones, three earbuds and the standard paperwork. On the side of the box these feature a logo stating “custom fit” – and so the confusion begins. (See the comfort section)
Design
Unique would be a term that doesn’t even begin to describe so many things about this headphone. A 10 mm driver rated at 16 ohms and the standard 20-20,000 Hz is housed in a black plastic casing. The tip is the same tip found across the other Empire Brands earphones and also found on numerous other earphones by a variety of companies. A y-shaped cord leaves the earphones and extends 1.2 meters to the gold 1/8th inch tip. A big improvement over the Little Buds is the left and right identifiers on the inside of each earphone. The reality is, you aren’t likely to notice any of that. Your likely to be just staring at the outside of each bud. That’s because of the large skull that are on the outside of each buds. There are five models in total, the other four (Maiden, Lucky, Knight & Ace) all the same internally and quite frankly externally. The Bones are unique in the sense that the headphone’s external part extends outside the bud and that’s a problem.
Comfort
There are two problems when it comes to the comfort of these headphones there are two problems. First are the earbuds. While you get three sizes, we feel that one is missing. The small is a tad bit larger then most smalls and then the next size up (the one that comes on the earbud in the box) could probably be classified as a large on a lot of headphones. Who could ever comfortably where the large size is beyond us, but we think that a more medium-like size would have been nice to have. The other problem are the skulls. Now we thank Wicked for not doing a full-on skull and crossbones design, because the skull was bad enough. Not only do they make these headphones unwearable based on aesthetics alone for much of the population – but the hurt. The skull portion of the headphone is in a chrome finish and features sharp edges on the bottoms. These edges push directly against your ear when you put them in your ear. While we eventually figured out how to mostly avoid this problem, it seemed unnecessary and unintelligent.
Isolation
The knives (I mean skulls) on the side of the earphones only created more problems. They actually prevented us from getting our earphones how we thought they should have gone because we simply could push them as far as we would have liked. In the end we still achieved between an 80-80% isolation most the time (using TheAudioFeed’s super scientific test) – so it was not a huge deal. We aren’t sure about this custom-fit business, but the JH13’s probably don’t have anything to fear, yet.
Sound
Judging by looks (which is our favorite thing to do) you’d expect a headphone to targeted towards those that listen to a lot of (heavy) rock and hip-hop. We were expecting an even more booming sound than we got with the 8mm driver that was in the Little Buds. We were expecting a sound that was going to have little concern for accuracy and balance. We were expecting colorred sound, we were hoping that it would be reigned in. Perhaps this was a good sign that we should stop generalizing because we were in for quite a treat.
Highs
Go look up the word “harsh” and then go back to this review. Anytime a song featured a vocal that was not a low/male vocal or any instrument lacking similar characteristics we got to hear a sharp sound that was not something we looked forward to. The intro to Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” highlighted this. We were treated to a wonderful mixture of instruments and beats and than the vocals and cymbals just ruined the nirvana that we were enjoying. The vocals of “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” (U2) and “They Bring Me to You” (Joshua Radin) continued to expose this weakness in the highs. We thought that some refining, if not a decent turn down of the highs would be one of the few sound improvement we would make.
Mids
Definitely the largest improvement over the Little Buds was the muddiness of the mids. While they were not perfect, the clarity is seriously improved. Songs like U2’s “40″ still caused havoc – but for the most part we got a treat. The mids blended the highs and lows nicely, but could not overcome the main problems with either. The accuracy and richness of the mids were decent, but were exposed by the overall signature of the earphone.
Lows
Our stereotypes screwed up this portion of the sound about as royally as we could. We were expecting a completely overpowering low end and what we got was a bass that was rather accurate and perhaps even below par in terms of its presence. Lil Wayne brought out the bass in “A Milli” but, his fellow hip-hop artist still fought an uphill battle when it came to getting a decent presence. The bass is relatively clean and avoids distortion even when it is challenged. The accuracy of the bass was decent, but unfortunately like the mids suffers from perhaps the too accurate mixture.
Marketing Anyone?
This isn’t a bad approach, but for this particular headphone we aren’t sure that this was the right one. The looks and the sound of these earphones could not be more diametrically opposed in our humble opinion. By the looks, you should be listening to heavy metal – yet the song that allowed these headphones to perform best in our testing: Elton John’s “Your Song.” That’s just bad marketing. The sound isn’t bad, it’s just wrong. At this price range these headphones are perhaps even more confused then we are when it comes to sound and looks.
Further Problems
While we like the sound, when it comes to accuracy, the balance is there but the accuracy and richness is not. At this price range, we imagine the typical buyer is looking for something that has similar mids and highs as the standard Apple earbuds, but with significantly better bass, comfort and isolation. That’s why Sennheiser makes the CX300 (and CX300 II.) By no means are the Wicked Empire’s bad, but they are just lost. If you are looking for a more balanced headphone, we oddly recommend the Wicked Empire earphones over something from Senneheiser?
Some Final Thoughts
We like these headphones, but they just need to find their own. They aren’t what you’d expect if you judge them by the box or the looks. Perhaps this is Empire Brands’ public service of granting those that are looking for Skullcandy-esk mockery of sound with something that is actually accurate. We don’t think that’s what those people want. There is something like the Little Buds that is colored, but still has decent accuracy at an incredible price – but these just aren’t that. While we aren’t sure if we’d recommend them about the Sennheisers; we can’t recommend this particular version because of the comfort and the isolation issues. As you can see, in this instance we are rather confused, but let’s make this clear: these aren’t bad (the other four models at least.) You can purchase the Wicked Empire for $17.95 from Amazon. These retail for $34.95 directly from Empire Brands.
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