Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was suspicious of the number of 5 star reviews before the official release date, but recognized that Jlab makes a few excellent headphones, so I bought on release date anyway. I'm a semi-audiophile of the budget variety, and am comparing to ~25 of the best budget earphones, which I own. For reference, my hearing goes to 15.9Khz, which is not bad for my age, and I can hear/feel down to 10 Hz. I have the Jlab J4, J5m, and J6m. To compare, the J4 has midbass bloat, way too much for an audiophile to tolerate, but it was extremely well built. The J5 was a drastic improvement. It a great, well built, and comfortable earphone with a nice bump in the bass without being bloated, excessive, or midbass focused. The J6 required 100 hours of burn in , but was then excellent and no longer sibilant, and pretty balanced and flat sound signature, perhaps my favorite before the Epic. In comparison, the Epic is a perfect bass connoisseur's earphone. Compared to the J5 it has deeper and more powerful subbass lows and makes the J5 seem like it has a midbass hump. The subbass is what the bass connoisseur desires, but excessive midbass is what lower quality and famous name earphones usually have. The Epic has both subbass impact, quantity, and quality. That is an unusual combination. In comparison, I have the highly rated Philips Fidelio S1 which costs $100, it has a somewhat similar angled shape. It has excellent subbass impact, but lacks the subbass quantity of the Epic. So in proportion, the S1 seems to have a little too much treble energy, while the Epic is just right. The Epic also wins on comfort. Despite the S1 having a similar shape (and equally 13mm drivers) the S1 requires adjustment in the ear every 10-15 minutes of jogging, while the Epic requires none, and has ended my search for the perfect earphone for my upcoming first marathon. I also have a Brainwavz Beta V2, which equals the Epic in comfort, but the Beta is midrange-centric with insufficient subbass and the highs with cymbals are too far back in the sound. the Beta also lacks the Epic's build quality. The earphone I own which is most similar in sound signature and sound quality to the Epic is the Philips SHE5105. However, the SHE5105 is uncomfortable and doesn't stay securely in the ear. My wife is no audiophile, but responded that the SHE5105 was awful (I'm sure she just didn't get a good fit, some people don't put the effort into seeing how good something can be if you work it in your ear just right.) However, she says the Epic is both the best sounding and most comfortable of my dozens of earphones. Now she wants her own. That is how much difference ease of good fit can have on someone's opinions. I compared the Epic to the ID America Spark. I previously thought the Spark had a wide (and V shaped) sound spectrum with good highs and deep lows. But the Epic has deeper lows and clearer, higher highs making the Spark sound narrow. And the Epic does this without any meaningful V shaped scooping out of mids. Impressive. My favorite song to test earphones is "End of an Empire" by Turisas. (Youtube search it.) On this, the Epic gives me goosebumps despite having heard the song many times. I do have some minor nitpicks. I don't think the cush fins add much. The Epic doesn't need them. They don't hurt it, and I just use them as the quickest way to grab to pull them out of ear when needed. Also, C3 (TM) just seems like an unnecessary marketing term without enough explanation to be useful. Does it refer to an EQ curve? Driver construction? Tested and graphed response curves like the Inner Fidelity or Golden Ears websites do? No clue. Also, Jlab calls the tips "gel tips" but they are the same type everyone usually calls silicone tips. I often switch between dozens of brands and sizes to get the best sound and fit on each and every earphone, but with the Epic (as well as J5 and Spark) I've had no desire to switch from the default tips. However, note that with the half-in-ear design of these (and Fidelio S1 and Beta V2) these do not depend on the tips to hold the earphone in your ear. In this case, you can choose the tips to tailor your preferred bass depth. Use a smaller tip to decrease bass or larger to increase it. So the clarity is excellent, only falling behind the JVC HA-FX40, but the FX40 has an awfully deep and unnaturally scooped V shape that makes it not nearly as good as the Epic. I'd say the Epic has a minor v shape, to near flat. In terms of subbass reach, I can clearly feel the Epic down to 15 Hz. The FX40 and J5 can go down to 12 Hz. However, in the magic range that matters of 18-60 Hz, this is where the Epic shines. Don't believe the various manufacturers that say their phones go down to 6 or 4 Hz. Test for yourself, because what matters is "At what volume relative to the rest of the audible sound spectrum?" Let me explain the importance of impact. A bass drum hit is fast and then releases fast. The Epic has the impact speed to appreciate the bass drum's place in heavy metal. When you have blast beats and fast bass drums, the earphones have to hit and release fast, or you don't feel the impact of the next bass drum hit because it is still playing the prior hit. The Epic handles this very well at half the cost of the S1 which also has equally excellent impact. This is my #1 recommendation for extreme metal fans, but no part of the sound detracts from classical music or other music genres.