Sound Quality
You might have gotten a preview of what the sound could be when I talked about the fit or difficulty of getting a good one. It’s quite unfortunate that headphones aren’t built to fit all size of head and ears but again in this case, I’ve had 5 people verify it with their same experience.
The bass of the headphone is pretty tight. It has good extension and impact. Obviously lose bass when the headphone isn’t sealed well on your head but otherwise I think this headphone has nice overall bass with minimal bloat.
The midrange is kind of problematic for me and this is both with bad seal (normal) and (unfortunately) good seal where I would squish the headphones in my head. My notes say it’s “low-fi” sounding but I think a more appropriate description is it sounds “cupped” or the singer is singing in a tunnel. It has some kind of coloration that is not pleasant to the ears and that is compounded by the fact that the midrange (low mids to middle midrange) is forward. The closest that I can compare in this area is the AKG K451 headphone that I reviewed ages ago. The Aiaiai Capital has a slightly warm character which really didn’t help that much due to the midrange problems.
Now the treble has some great sparkle to it. Initially I was expecting it to roll off severely as is the case with most on-ear closed headphone in this price and type. The Aiaiai Capital has a prominent lower treble that makes the presentation lively and while it’s not quite articulate and refined in this area, I still liked it. The mid treble and beyond rolls off smoothly.
The overall signature is kind of weird. Good bass, muffled mids and sparkly lower treble. The soundstage is non-existent here which is understandable due to its type however I feel this is one of the more closed-sounding soundstage I’ve heard even for an on-ear type of headphone.
Finally, this headphone can get you to loud listening volumes through your MP3 or any other portable player.
Conclusion
Due to issues with fit and poor rendition of midrange, I would definitely not recommend this headphone. There’s a supposedly newer version of this which would’ve fixed the fit issues but if they didn’t make an improvement on the sound then I don’t think that would help that much. As I remarked above, the problematic midrange didn’t change even when I forced the headphone flat on my ears.
At 3,000 pesos there is a lot of headphones out there that can provide a better price to performance ratio. Aiaiai Capital is just not one of them.