Headphone Reviews

Sound Quality
Bass on the Acoustic Research AR-H1 is tight, undistorted, and well extended. I do like a modestly elevated bass and the AR-H1 is flat, but open headphones rarely have an elevated bass response so no knocks there. Plenty of nuance and texture here, decent power handling as well. Bass is the strong point for these headphones.

Midrange is a little rough and sometimes hard sounding—especially at higher volumes—but the big problem is the upper midrange/low treble (1kHz-3kHz) is somewhat recessed causing the overall tone to lack presence and seem a little distant. Vocals are also somewhat lackluster due to reduced overtones that reside in this area.

While the lower treble is somewhat subdued, there is a fairly strong response peak in the 8kHz-12kHz area, which creates a sort of high frequency splashy sound around cymbals and sibilant vocal sounds. The peak is high enough in frequency not to create a piercing character, but it does become tiresome after listening for a while.

I have seen some comments on-line claiming very deep and wide imaging for the AR-H1. My experience switching between the AR-H1, Audeze LCD-2 Classic, and MrSpeakers Aeon Flow Open was that the latter two headphones did a significantly better job of creating a coherent image portraying the whole of the music, while the AR-H1 image was more discontinuous and confused. It may have givent he impression of more space, but, to me, this seemed more due to the missing presence region causing an artificial perception of distance rather than well controlled depth and width.

The bass had nice dynamic punch, but punch in the midrange was overshadowed by the hardness that could be fairly wince-inducing at higher volumes. The Audeze LCD-2 Classic, HiFiMAN HE400S, and especially the MrSpeakers Aeon Flow Open were much smoother and coherent sounding headphones.

Five years ago the AR-H1 would have been a pretty good headphone...today, not so much. MrSpeakers, Audeze, and HiFiMAN were born, and have been living face-to-face, in the acid soup of headphone enthusiasts. All three have taken their lumps, learned lessons, and refined their designs and manufacturing processes. They're well aware of all the details that need to be ticked off to make an enthusiast worthy headphone.

My guess is Acoustic Research saw the market opportunity in the $500-$1000 segment—it's been damned near empty for a while—and figured their brand name and industrial design chops would give them entre. So, they likely went to an ODM/OEM headphone supplier and gave it a shot. To be fair, they did a decent job. But getting it right, really right, right enough to win over the headphone enthusiast crowd, is a lot harder than it looks. The AR-H1 doesn't quite cut the mustard for me.

Summary
At first blush the Acoustic Research AR-H1 seemed like a promising open, over-ear, planar magnetic headphone. The look, materials, and build quality are quite good. Unfortunately, long listening sessions brought out comfort problems with an over-tensioned headband and earpads that were not deep enough to prevent my ers from touching the magnet structure. The cable and carry case seem underwhelming at this price.

Bass response is good, but lack of upper-midrange/low-treble presence gave a distant sound to vocals that lacked overtone proportion. The mid-treble was marred be a fairly strong response around 10kHz giving a high frequency splashy sound to cymbals and sibilance. Fortunately it's not piercing.

Five years ago this would have been a decent addition to the price point—well, there was virtually nothing there—but in todays world I'd shell out the extra $200 for the significantly superior MrSpeakers Aeon Flow Open or Audeze LCD-2 Classic. Though it's a little bass-light, the HiFiMAN HE400S is a significantly smoother sounding headphone at half the price.

Video
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Resources
Acoustic Research High-Fidelity home page and AR-H1 product page.
Head-Fi.org impressions thread.
SBAF impressions thread.