Shotgunshane's rapid reaction to Astell&Kern X Jerry Harvey's universal Layla earphone runs hot with expressions such as: insanity!, absolutely huge, and coherency. Shot is reasonably impressed. But there are a couple of hitches, one being the earphone's enormous size, another being bass tuner ergonomics. The final, and 2500$ crux is this:

“However, if Layla‘s bass was very good and treble simply fantastic, then I’d have to label the midrange as somewhat disappointing. I found the Layla midrange to be oddly veiled and honky. I joked with my friend that it was like Myles Kennedy was singing through a toilet paper roll. Here, I found the UERM to handily outperform the Layla in both transparency and midrange resolution. I did find a sizable dip around 1.5 kHz and I’m betting this may be contributing to my perception of slight veil.”

Overall, Shot gives the clarity and overall performance edge to the UERM, which goes for quite a bit less.

And if that's what Jerry Harvey's team were going for (and if Shot's impressions mete out reality), then good on 'em. If not, this earphone may be quite the polariser.

And nothing would be more siren than that.

For more information about Layla universal, head to Astell&Kern's Layla page.