Mention the word "headphones" to the average audiophile geek, and the name Ultimate Ears is hardly the first to come to mind. In fact, it probably won't come to mind at all. One reason is that this small firm out of Irvine, CA has virtually no traditional retail distribution with which to expose itself: Though the company recently inked a deal that placed some of its high-performance in-ear 'phones in Apple's branded storefronts, UE does virtually all its business direct through its website (ultimateears.com). Then there's the far-from-mainstream pricing: In a world where most people consider $40 earbuds an expensive iPod add-on, UE's entry-level model costs twice that, and it jumps up from there: $130, $150, $400, then into the stratosphere with the company's custom in-ear monitors. The top-of-the-line UE11 Pro — the subject of this review — goes for $1,150, which doesn't even include the visit to your local audiologist to get a mold taken of your ear (typically about 50 bucks). Three other custom-fit models cost between $700 and $900.
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The Short Form
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| Price $1,150 (plus cost of fitting) / ultimateears.com / 800-589-6531 |
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Snapshot
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| Though incredibly expensive, these custom-fit in-ear headphones deliver unparalleled performance in a compact, carry-along design. |
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Plus
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•Remarkable midrange and high frequency clarity •Unusually deep and taut bass for a headphone •Custom-fit blocks out ambient noise without active circuitry •Lightweight, compact design |
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Minus
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•Custom-molded in-ear design may be uncomfortable for some listeners •Breathtakingly expensive |
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Key Features
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•Quad armature system with 3-way crossover •Custom-molded fit provides 26 dB of noise isolation •Supplied engraved storage case, portable carrying case, and cleaning tool •Input connector: 1/8-inch (3.5mm) gold-plated Published Specifications: •Input Sensitivity: 119db @ 1mw •Frequency Response: 10Hz to 16,500 Hz •Impedance: 18 Ohms at 1kHz |
Arguably, these would have to be pretty special earphones to warrant such breathtaking price tags, and, indeed, they were never originally intended for mere mortals. The company was founded by a professional concert engineer to create in-ear stage monitors for performing rockers, who need both accurate sound and superior isolation to avoid going deaf from traditional blaring stage monitors. As unknown as UE is to typical consumers, it is well known to professional musicians, and, nowadays, to Hollywood's iPod-toting celebrity set. I should note that Ultimate is not alone in this niche: Etymotic Research and Shure both play in high-performance in-ear 'phones. But it can be argued that Ultimate has taken the concept to a fairly high level.
As a serious commuter (up to 4 hours each day on mass transit between New York City and my rural Jersey digs), I've auditioned a number of high-end noise-canceling headphones. One thing I can tell you is that once you've thrown away those white ear-buds, there's no going back. Good sonics on a quiet background reveals so much more of the music in every track that the reward quickly outweighs the inconvenience of carrying full-size on-ear or over-ear 'phones. But I admit I missed having earphones that fit easily in a pocket, so when UE inquired about my auditioning the UE11 Pro, I jumped. Could the tiny drivers inside each earpiece possibly deliver the fidelity of full-size headphones? Or even better? I was soon to find out.
Setup & Features
Getting a pair of Ultimate Ears custom monitors takes more effort than plunking down a credit card. It takes a credit card and a bit of time to be fitted by an audiologist, (i.e., a hearing aid expert). UE has a list of recommended audiologists in most metro areas familiar with the type of mold they need; essentially a full impression of the ear canal and most of the outer ear. The whole process takes about 20 minutes. The audiologist gently sticks a little cotton plug with a string attached into your ear canal, then fills the canal and outer ear with a gooey liquid that expands into a spongy foam. When it's all cured a few minutes later, he or she gives a gentle tug on the string, and out comes a rather large alien-looking earplug. Ship these off to UE, and your 'phones are delivered to your door inside of a couple of weeks.
Your custom monitors arrive nicely presented, in a metal storage box which opens to a foam insert that in turn has a your 'phones in a smaller brushed-metal pocket case. You also get a little plastic wand with a short wire poker on the end, used to clear out any wax that might build up in the two tiny channels that funnel sound from the transducers to the end of the earpiece. UE offers a wide variety of translucent or opaque colors for the earphones' plastic housings and you can customize the flat portion that's exposed to the world with your own artwork, some celebrity samples of which are shown on the company's site. My favorite is the bejeweled skull and crossbones on black favored by Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith, but I went with an icy cool translucent housing in what Ultimate calls Electric Blue. Plus, my initials RS are imprinted on my earphones for identification, lest I mix them up with my fellow band mates' during another drug-infused drunken orgy following one of our stadium shows. Yeah . . . right.
Of course, it's what's inside that counts, and for your grand-and-change you get an admittedly sophisticated if miniature product. First, UE skips traditional drivers, with their voice coils and diaphragms, in favor of armature transducers. Imagine a turned coil through which the signal passes, and what amounts to a pin suspended inside that moves up and down with the signal. This engine is mounted inside a tiny rectangular can so that the pin strikes the cap of the can as it moves and makes sound. The benefit is said to be a more precise level of driver control than can typically be achieved with a conventional diaphragm, particularly in the mid- and high frequencies.
Incredibly, there are four of these armatures crammed into each earpiece, marking the first time Ultimate has managed this in one of its 'phones. One of these is specifically dedicated to high frequencies and operates from around 4 kHz on up. The sound from this feeds into your ear canal through its own sealed channel, one of two in this so-called "dual-bore" design. A dedicated midrange driver operates from 4 kHz down to about 250 Hz, and stacked atop it are a pair of bass drivers, with all three feeding your ear through the second channel. The bass armatures operate in overlapping ranges as well, covering in total the frequencies from about 10 Hz up to 250 Hz. In essence, this makes the UE 11 Pro the world's first headphone with its own dedicated subwoofer.
According to Paul Manfrini, UE's director of product development, there's some additional hocus-pocus going on inside each of these earpieces, with various acoustic dampers and minute adjustments to the lengths of the tubes that help achieve the appropriate crossover points and affect the sound UE's engineers are going for. Interestingly, despite the company's patents and groundbreaking efforts in miniature transducer design, Manfrini defends the notion that his is not an engineering-driven firm. "We don't start our designs with a curve in mind," he says. "We start by having a sound we want to achieve. A lot of it is trial and error, and we keep trying till we get what we want."
Some part of that sound is achieved through the custom fit. The earpiece seals so perfectly to your ear that you get 26 decibels of sound isolation with no active noise-canceling circuitry, resulting in remarkable efficiency (helpful with portable players) and a clean background from which to hear detail and dynamics. But the 'phones also use the ear itself as part of the equation. With proper fit, the earpiece fits about 2/3 of the way into the ear canal, allowing it to reach the bony material inside the ear. This bone conductivity greatly enhances the transmission and perception of bass frequencies, and is accounted for in the design when they're balancing the sound.
Performance
Comfort is a very personal thing when it comes to headphones, and perhaps my only caveat with this or any other tight-fitting in-ear model is that it might not be right for you. I have tried lightweight on-ear and over-ear designs among full-size headphones, for example, and have found the on-ear approach more comfortable for long sessions. This was my first experience with custom in-ear 'phones, and they took some getting used to. Once I figured out how to quickly get them in and out and situated for the best seal and most comfortable fit, it still took a while for my ears to adjust to having them in for long periods. The pressure around the perimeter of the ear canal was at first fatiguing, and the 'phones don't let the ear canal breath, which for some folks may make them less than ideal for wearing during strenuous activity or in sticky climates. But I stuck with it, and in a short while my ears eventually adjusted to where I no longer notice that they're in.
Good thing, too, because I'd be missing out on what amounts to incredibly detailed and extended sound, sonics that border on amazing for such tiny earphones, or for any headphones at all. Among my old favorite audiophile CDs that I use when testing gear is a collection from the New Orleans jazz band A la Carte Brass & Percussion called Boogeyin'! Swamprock, Salsa & Trane. It's a ridiculously challenging recording with a dozen or more brass and percussion instruments playing at once on some tracks, all closely and cleanly miked without compression. "Lucy I'm Home," a percussion-infused rendition of the theme from I Love Lucy, was a revelation on the UE 11. There's a lot going on in this track, and, listening through the headphone output on my high-end preamp, I heard it all with a level of accuracy I hadn't experienced before. The snare drum was particularly revealing, in that I could really hear for the first time all the fine details of the springs rattling against the bottom skin, something that's easily smeared and lost on most systems. Dynamics were outstanding: When the trumpets and trombones came in together to blast the song's final notes, I got a great sense of the first impact of the sound wave, but these and other horns on other good recordings never sounded brittle or blaring.
Another track, a cover of "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," features a vocal by bass-baritone Alvy Powell that came through with tremendous power and dynamics on the UE 11 — incredibly smooth and clear, while remaining well balanced against the full bass drum that carried the bottom end, and with the fine, crisp clacking of a wooden stick beat. At the end of the track, after the music stops, one of the musicians can be heard exclaiming, "damn!" in wonderment at the performance, and I couldn't have agreed more.
Female voice was equally engaging. A listen to Shirley Horn singing Cole Porter's "Love for Sale" on The Cole Porter Songbook: Night and Day, a sultry tribute to the age-old profession, revealed every nuance of her sweet, breathy vocal, again with perfectly smooth accompaniment from the trumpets and baritone sax, and tuneful, extended notes from the string bass. To see how the UE 11 handled more serious low end, I threw on Chrisette Michele's hip-hopish crossover album I Am for its deep electronic and electric bass lines. I was surprised by the definition and tautness in the subterranean beat in "Good Girl," and pleased by the exceptionally balanced sonics that gave equal play to the multi-tracked backup vocals and the fine sounds of rattling metal in a shaken tambourine.
What it comes down to is that the UE 11 delivers a remarkable level of midrange and high-end clarity that can be almost breathtaking, and a bottom end that sounds deep and taut for any headphone, but without being overblown or hypey. And it does so with a kind of effortlessness that's unusual in my experience. If I can make a sometimes overused analogy, the music just breathes through these earphones, unforced and naturally. This was driven home on a Chesky recording of the Connecticut Early Music Festival Ensemble doing the "Winter" concerto from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The sweetness and delicacy of the violins, and the bouncy quality of the struck harpsichord, came across with remarkable detail and ease, with no hint of edge and with a rich smoothness that's reminiscent of live instruments. These are strings as they're meant to be heard.
Bottom Line
I could go on about all the little things I heard for the first time through the UE 11 Pro in recordings well known to me, down to obvious sound edits that had never before revealed themselves. But the bottom line is that plugging these things into my iPod let me rediscover my music collection all over again, which, for an audiophile, is the end goal of adding any new component to your system. Yes, they're pricey, and undoubtedly restricted to those who demand the best or simply need the most accurate earphones they can find for professional use. For everyone else, Ultimate Ears' entry level $80 'phones and mid-level models, which are said to borrow heavily from the technology developed for their custom products, are worth looking into. It's true that you may never have heard of Ultimate Ears. But this aptly named company obviously knows what it's hearing.
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