Review: AAW W900 – Singaporean Hybrid

Disclaimer: The AAW W900 sample was sent to us free of charge for this review. I paid to get my impressions done, send them to Singapore and to import the finished product. Advanced Acoustic Werkes is not a site advertiser.

About AAW

Advanced AcousticWerkes is a Singaporean manufacturer of custom and universal earphones. They have been in this scene for a little while already and have been gaining popularity especially in the Asian markets. What has given them a lot of exposure and made them get more known in other regions have been their universals but especially their flagship W900 model which we will be looking at today. It has made quite a lot of waves in the audiophile scene. Their models are used by a vast number of professional musicians in and around Singapore.

About W900

The AAW W900 is a four-way hybrid construction, that uses a proprietary nine Millimeter dynamic driver for lows, dual BA‘s for mids, a pair of BA‘s for highs and a quartet of balanced armatures for upper treble. This gives it a total of nine drivers. It currently sits at the top of AAW‘s lineup and enjoys their flagship status with a price tag of roughly 2100 US $.

AAW has put in their TruXcross four-way crossover design, which employs a physical low pass filter on the dynamic bass driver and a three-way electronic passive crossover for their respective balanced armature counterparts.

On AAW‘s webpage for W900 we can find out that it has an impressive frequency range from 18Hz to all the way up to 40kHz. They even provide a measurement graph for you to look at. Its sensitivity is said to be 107.5 dB SPL at 1mW, coupled with an impedance of 18+/-2 Ohms at 1kHz this is not the most sensitive monitor, when we look at the numbers. Driving it from a regular source will not be a problem though, but most of my other reference/flagship monitors are much more sensitive and need a lot less juice to get to higher listening levels. That doesn’t really matter though. Keep in mind, these products probably were made also with pro-audio gear in mind, which have higher output impedance and probably not the most silent backgrounds. So going this route enables AAW to offer undisturbed performances and listening experiences. Good thinking!
AAW recommends their flagship for Guitars, Vocals, Drums, Bass, Engineers and Audiophiles.

Their universal models have been reviewed here on headfonia already in the past. This though is the first time that we will feature one of their custom models.

Custom Build Choices (Personalization)

When it comes to ordering your own custom W900 you are left with a rather outdated ordering-form from AAW. You get two PDF files containing the shell and face plate options you‘re looking at. You get 15 options each for translucent and opaque colors as well as 15 ‘exquisite’ colors, which are mostly Glitter, Goldflake or other Flake inlays in opaque colors. For the face plate you get 18 choices for ‘Elegance’ and 15 for their ‘Luxury’ options, as well as three user designed (art) choices. You then get ten different choices to place the logo on the face plate.
All these options leave you with tons of choices to make for your own pair. I personally hope AAW will update their design tool to a more modern one, as most companies offer a simpler preview tool on their sites. It doesn‘t have to be a 3D image like JH offers, but a little preview picture would really help customers who seek an AAW model.

The review continues with Package and Build Quality after the jump!