Initial Impression(~5 Hours Use)
I was sitting around bored this morning, and I hear a ring on the doorbell. Who can this be ? Open up and here is the UPS guy, I found myself smileing.
Packaging
The packaging is nothing short of splendid. It comes in a nice magnetic seal box with a cool slip over it. Opening it up, you see a bold 1 page booklet with "A Message from The Head Monster". Past the booklet, you find a nice soft pouch and a hard pouch for carying the headphones and the headphones themselves. The small soft pouch is made of a nice felt, has the Monster name all over it with the words "Life is to short to listen to bad headphones", and is a snap close(Two flexable peiecs that at rest stretch out and keep a straight shape, snapping it closed). Overall a really nice pouch. The hard pouch is leather with read kniting, It's a magnetic point heal and it has a Nice Monster Turbine seal ontop. Really nice, but your not reading this to hear about the pouches. Removing the plastic, you find a baggie two different triple flange tip, One smaller one bigger, the smaller triple flange reaches deeper into your ear and a shirt clip. There is another baggie containing a pair of Small, Medium and Large size tips(Not couting the Medium size on the IEMs). Underneath you find silica gel and lots of very nice small booklets for safe listening, instructions, reviews, etc. Every audio company can learn from this packaging. It is nothing short of amazing and has great advertisement so it can easily catch a buyers eye.
Build Quality
Like the packaging, the build quality is amazing. The IEMs themselves are made of high quality metals and really nicely cut. This does make them a little on the heavy side but it doesn't make them uncomfortable. The IEMs look amazing and will catch people's eyes. They have have clear labels for left and right and left has a blue line and right has a read line. The cable is soft and rubber and is durable. The connector and Y splitter have metal in the, giving them a nice sturdy feeling and a nice touch. The one flaw I see is the cable point where the cable goes into the IEMs, it is rubber so after lots of abuse this might cause problems. That's just a small nitpick and if you take care of your IEMs then you should be fine. Monster is really setting a high standard for packaging and build quality but what about performance ?
Isolation
They isolate just like any other headphones, they are silicone tips and have a variety of sizes for everyone to choose. The triple flanges of cource seal the best, but I found the small triple flanges go very deep into your ear and they wouldn't isolate correctly on my left ear. You should be able to use any tips that you have for your Ultimate Ears older universal(Studio.Fi 3, Triple.Fi 10, Super.Fi 5 EB). I do this test using the medium size tips, larger triple flange and my UE medium size. The UE matching my ears the best.
Performance
My testing setup consists mostly of my Rockbox'd iPod 5G with a little use of my Sony Home Theater Speaker amp and my Dell Latoptop, which has a strong nice amp(I don't know why). A lot of the music I tested with was in FLAC quality with some MP3s in 320kbps or LAME V2.
Dubstep(Most UKF Dubstep tracks and their 2010 album, check out their Soundcloud)
I bought these so I could enjoy dubstep. I was quite wrong. The bass quantity is really high with strong mids but the highs where hidden. They also have limited soundstage, even amplified, did not fair well with the different sounds. They do show a lot of bass detail but not as much as my DBA-02s(On their Bass Setting). They the bass feels a lot like my Studio.Fi 3s but with a lot more of a kick. The amount had me reaching for my EQ settings. I have found that some really high frequencies to seem to crackle a little bit, more than they do on my DBA-02s and a lot more than on my Studio.Fi 3s.
Aloe Blacc(FLAC, new soul singer)
These IEMs faired really well with Soul. They sound very natural and smooth and this albums low and mid frequency instruments really play out well for the songs but the hidden highs have me messing with EQ setting to have his voice louder and more in play.
Louis Armstrong(FLAC)
Here I find how smooth the mids and lows really are. Louies low voice let him present himself nicely in the mids on the Turbines and the Turbines have very nice mids. Any trumpet play was smooth, it seemed like the Turbines took away the harsh sound in the trumpets while in my DBA-02s, their crisp detail makes the trumpets really harsh. The Turbines are definetly smoother than my Studio.Fi 3s and definetly smoother than my DBA-02s.
ACDC(FLAC, Black In Black Album)
The smooth presentation and hidden mids take away from the vocals. They have a little less texture than my Super.Fi 3s and a lot loss than my DBA-02s, but this is my DBA-02s strongpoint. You will pick up every bass drum due to the bass quantity, I find this is a nice detail I don't have on my DBA-02s and my Super.Fis. Again, I find the very highs crackle a little bit. I do not recomended for Rock fans.
Rap/Hip-Hop/Pop
These headphones will make an average high school listener happy. The bass and mids make this catagory shine and these songs don't require much soundstage. In the Kesha test, they produce a nice sound overall. Again the highs a little crackled but the bass gave her a songs more impact. The smoothness of these headphones doesn't give the harsh abrupt stop in tone my DBA-02s have. When listening to Black and Yellow by Wiz Khalifa, these headphones really shined. Everything played out nicely, even with the electronic sounds. The mids and smoothness where represented nicely and the bass had all the kick it needed. I found the same result in a lot of rap and pop songs.
Weird Situation
I found bliss in these headphones at one point today, when I was in the car. I got my left ear to isolate right and I just could not get isolate correctly. For some reason, this gave me a balanced sound, not to strong of a bass, clearer highs and a nice sound. Expecially on older songs, "I will survive" and "Life is a Highway". I'm not saying you should keep one ear isolated and one ear half isolated all the time, I'm just telling you how I found bliss.
My Thoughts
Monster did a good job on the build of the headphones. They went with the concept of bigger is better. Yes, this produced a nice bass quantity and nice mids but since the driver is bigger but the soundstage got smaller and highs are hard to reproduce. Maybe with more proper amplification, they could shine but how many people walk around with protable amps ? I may test this theory when I finish my Mini^3 but I don't plan to keep these long. I have also found that with more burn in and the placebo effect, the bass calms down a bit showing the smoothness in the headphones. The mids in these headphones in something to look for but their high and low representation is something to dread. These headphones could have a lot of potential with just brighter highs and a greater soundstage.
Conclusion
The Monster Turbines have great packaging and build quality, some of the best I have seen yet. Their performance falls a little short of this. They produce nice smooth mids and lows which could have made me happy but the hidden highs, small soundstage and overpowering bass quantity turn me away. These are headphones for an average high school student that listens to a lot of Hip-Hop/Rap/Pop with a little outside of this general catagory. At the price I got them for (~60$), buy them now. I would spend no more that 100$ on these, and their current price ~140$ I do not think they are worth it.
