The engineer before the company.

JH Audio is the second in-ear company of Jerry Harvey, a live-sound engineer from St. Louis whose name is closely tied to the custom in-ear monitor. As a touring mixer he worked for Kiss, Morrissey, the Cult, David Lee Roth and Van Halen, Inc. magazine reported in 2007. In 1995, during rehearsals for Van Halen’s Balance tour, the drummer Alex Van Halen complained that the stage was too loud; Harvey built him a custom-moulded earpiece with two drivers — one for low frequencies, one for high — split by a crossover. English Wikipedia, citing ProSoundWeb, says the low-frequency driver was a Knowles balanced armature originally made for a pacemaker.

That set led to Ultimate Ears, which Harvey co-founded with Mindy Harvey in 1995. Its shells were made, and its monitors assembled, by Westone of Colorado Springs until the two companies fell out in 2001, Inc. reported; Ultimate Ears then built its own lab. The company later moved to Irvine, California, with an outside investor as chief executive. Harvey left in 2007 — he later told the Orlando Sentinel he had been “forced out” — and in August 2008 Logitech agreed to buy Ultimate Ears for $34 million, Stereophile reported.

JH Audio’s website is careful about the size of the claim. Harvey, it says, “did not invent the CIEM” — the custom in-ear monitor — but “is credited with inventing the first multi-driver CIEM.”

From cockpits to the JH13 Pro.

Jerry Harvey Audio began in the air rather than on stage. The company says it “got its start in 2007” making custom-fit in-ear communication headsets for private pilots — Harvey has flown since 2003, it says — and that it made three aviation models. English Wikipedia, citing a 2009 Head-Fi report, says Harvey and Brittany Harvey co-founded Jerry Harvey Audio LLC in late 2007, and, citing ProSoundWeb, that a non-compete agreement kept him out of pro audio at first. The aviation line was later dropped to refocus on music — in 2010 by the company’s account, in January 2011 according to ProSoundWeb.

The music line arrived in 2009. The JH13 Pro put two low, two mid and two high drivers in each ear with a three-way crossover, and the eight-driver JH16 Pro followed; by the company’s own timeline these were the first six- and eight-driver in-ear monitors. The Orlando Business Journal reported in 2010 that the company, then based in Apopka, outside Orlando, had made $1 million in revenue in 2009, and that Harvey still mixed concerts for part of each year, partly to test new models under real stage conditions. In January 2013 the company promoted its finance chief, Steve Thomas, to chief executive, according to a press release. Its Roxanne of 2013, in the Siren Series, carried twelve balanced-armature drivers per ear — four low, four mid and four high — with adjustable bass, and the company calls it the first 12-driver IEM. JH Audio also lists a 2012 Popular Science “Invention of the Year” for the JH13 Pro and JH16 Pro, which we could not confirm, and six US patents with titles such as “Dual bore canalphone system” and “Phase correcting canalphone system and method.”

Its current custom range borrows rock song titles — Sheena, Sharona, Roxanne and Layla — alongside the Pearl and Ruby pair, the Ambient Pro and the numbered JH16V2, JH13V2, JH11 and JH7; universal-fit versions of some models are sold too.

The custom in-ear trade.

The seven brands here make earphones that sit in the ear canal, but they come from different trades. Some grew out of hearing health and earmould laboratories, others out of touring, where custom-moulded monitors replaced loudspeakers on stage.

Etymotic Research was founded in 1983 by the audiologist Mead Killion in Elk Grove Village, Illinois; in 2018, The Hearing Review reported, Lucid’s parent, Hearing Lab Technology, took a controlling interest, and in 2020 Lucid Audio bought Westone Audio from Westone Laboratories. Westone Audio says it was acquired in 2026 by The Fidelity Collective, whose Irving, Texas, address now appears on both brands’ websites; Westone Laboratories, the Colorado hearing-health firm, was bought by TLS Sound Labs in 2025.

JH Audio, founded by the monitor engineer Jerry Harvey, says its earphones are built in Orlando, Florida; Sound Devices, part of the Audiotonix group, announced its acquisition in May 2025. Empire Ears, which said it was family-owned and hand-made its monitors in Norcross, Georgia, announced that it closed in February 2026.

Vision Ears says it has made in-ear monitors by hand in Cologne since 2013; it was founded by Marcel Schoenen and Amin Karimpour, who its legal notice lists as managing directors. Noble Audio, founded in 2013 by John Moulton, now trades as Noble HiFi, LLC, of Whitehouse, Texas, and says John and Jim Moulton each own half. Unique Melody says it was founded in 2007 and gives its address as Zhuhai, in Guangdong, China.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

The FLY GIRL logo.

In May 2025 JH Audio was bought by Sound Devices, the American maker of location-sound recorders and wireless systems, which belongs to the British pro-audio group Audiotonix, owner of Allen & Heath, DiGiCo and Solid State Logic. The announcement, dated 30 May 2025 from Chessington, called JH Audio a “US-based in-ear monitoring developer and manufacturer” and Harvey its “founder and CEO.” Audiotonix’s chief executive, James Gordon, called Harvey “the true pioneer of IEMs”; Harvey said the two sides had already worked together on “the Pearl IEM system.” The investment firm Ardian agreed to buy a majority stake in Audiotonix in 2019, the Financial Times reported.

JH Audio says its custom and universal monitors “are built in Orlando, Florida,” each “assembled by hand using our proprietary drivers, crossover components,” and calls them “Hand crafted, never mass-produced”; we give that as the company’s statement. Its website lists an Orlando headquarters and partner locations in Burbank, California, and Nashville — the latter at DiGiCo — for ear impressions and repairs. Its logo has a name: the website says “The FLY GIRL logo is a registered trademark of Jerry Harvey Audio LLC.” It publishes no brand colours or typefaces. Its finishes include carbon fibre, titanium and polished stainless steel, which it says draw on watchmakers, tattoo artists and knife makers.

For a design guide, JH Audio shows a brand built on one engineer’s name and stage record, now inside a larger group. Compare Ultimate Ears, the company Harvey started first, and Westone, which made the shells for its early monitors. For this guide we use a carbon black and a stage red with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep JH Audio’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.