mrdeadfolx
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2007
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Figured I should move this to the IEM section. (Now includes pics and review
)
So, after much contemplation, I finally decided to pull the trigger on a set of UE11's. At first I intended to find an audiologist in my area to do my impressions and mail them to UE. Then my friend Joaquin and I decided to fly to Las Vegas this week for a much-needed vacation, so I got to thinking, maybe I'll just pay UE a visit personally. Yesterday, that's what I did.
It was a 4 hour roadtrip to Irvine, California with a very reluctant but cooperative Joaquin riding shotgun after just whetting his appetite in Vegas the night before for the first time ever. In true fanboy fashion, as soon as I got to UE I pulled out the camera and started annoying everybody, all in the name of making this thread
This is me (sportin' a SWEET sunglasses tan!) getting my impressions done by Noy, UE's audiologist. You may remember him as the awkward asian man in UE's Youtube videos. They did this for free (Thanks UE!), and this way I know it was done right the first time.
This is an unbelievably and inexcuseably blurry picture of my impessions. I had about 2 seconds to snap that shot before Noy scooped them up and hurried them away to get them out the door before the cutoff for the day.
Here is a picture of a sweet lady who's name completely fails me at the moment, putting up with me snapping pictures of her as she took a breather from "welding" the faceplate onto a set of customs.
Next on the mini-production line was this lady, installing the components into a set of UE11's. The time and care these people put into making each set of customs is amazing. I'm pretty sure they were working on one pair for my entire stay at the lab.
In the next room is where the acrylic shells are made. They take a mold of your impressions, fill it with liquid acrylic, and place it into a little box where it is exposed to UV light for 10 seconds or so. This hardens the first layer of acrylic. They then pour the remaining acrylic out, and then expose the shell to UV light again for a minute or so to harden it. Very cool.
This shot is of a custom art job in progress. They laser engrave your picture of choice onto the shell, and then handpaint it after that. If anyone here has looked at the custom art section of UE's website, you too will probably have absolutely no idea how they manage to get the artwork so perfect.
My next picture was of myself with the lovely Jeanette Coffey, UE's customs department customer service manager, but on a promise to Jeanette, I cannot show it in this thread. She was very camera-shy and graceful enough to take a picture with me, and made me promise to not show it to anyone, so I've gotta stick to my word and omit this one. Too bad for you guys, she's a total knockout!
As far as UE's customer service goes, there is nothing I can say that will tell you how incredibly awesome my experience there was. From the minute I walked in the door to the time I walked back out of it they gave me (and Joaquin) the red carpet treatment. Jeanette gave me the grand tour of the lab, office and warehouse, took the time to introduce me to everyone at UE (who by the way, completely stopped what they were doing to meet and talk with me), and totally spoiled me every time she had a chance. She gave Joaquin and I both UE merchandise packages (pic below), threw in the extra cable, and an extension cable I had ordered for free, and get this: She took my number down, and called me this morning to tell me that she and Brad from UE had called around Vegas to reserve tickets to 2 shows for us this weekend! One is "Scintas" tonight at the Hilton, and the other is the Blue Man Group show at the Venetian tomorrow night! After everything she had already done for us, this completely blew me away. On top of that, she told me she'd get a picture of my UE11's up on the website. I've never experienced such great customer service in my entire life, and suffice it to say UE has secured my business for a very long time. Thanks a million, Brad and Jeanette! Even Joaquin, who is in no way an audiophile, decided to get a set of customs after the awesome experience we had. You'll probably see him on this board sometime in the near future asking you which amp to pair with his UE customs
This is the contents of our UE merch packages. As you can see its not your typical bumper sticker and keychain swag! The package included a UE t-shirt, engraved zippo lighter, engraved flask, sweatband, lanyard, and 2 sets of UE earplugs. I couldn't believe they gave us this stuff for free, nevermind gave it to us for free twice!
On the advice of Jeanette, we stopped by Laguna Beach on the way back to take in the sites, and although it took us probably 6 hours to get back to Vegas, it was well worth it. The only other picture I wish I could include in this thread is the picture of my shiny new UE11s, but that will have to wait for a couple of weeks until they are in my hands. The anticipation is killing me! I will edit this thread to include pictures of them, and a review when they arrive. (EDIT: Done!)
My new UE11's in all their glory!
*Initial impressions edit: Ok, I've had my UE's for a couple weeks now and have had time to get used to their sound signature, and I can safely say these are easily the best headphones I've ever listened to, full size cans included. My preferred IEM's prior to these were my trusty Shure SE530's, and although they are a great set of IEM's, they just can't hold a candle to these badboys.
There is a forwardness and depth to the UE11's sound that is absent in every IEM I've ever tried that I didn't even realize I was missing because I never knew it existed. I've always disagreed with people who said that SE530's have rolled-off highs. Well, I now humbly admit I was wrong about that. I listen to a lot of metal, and the very first thing I realized when listening to the UE11's was how seperated all the instruments sounded, despite the sometimes noisy nature of the genre. The second thing I noticed was the treble. I was listening to Divine Heresy's Savior Self and for the first time, I could hear the looseness of the drummer's hi-hat, and the timbre and resonance of the cymbals. This is quite a feat considering it has to be heard over very forward, loud and distorted guitars and vocals. Not an ounce of shrillness or sibilance to speak of, just clear, soaring highs. Very impressive.
The next thing I noticed was the unbelievable bass impact. I will say this right now: If you are not a big fan of bass, stay away from these. The bass is easily the most prominent part of the UE11's sound sig. It is far deeper and more impactful than UM2's and SE530's bass, if you can believe that. Yet at the same time it is not in the least bit muddy, in fact it is extremely controlled and smooth. I kept wondering how bass in such huge quantity could accomplish this. While listening to hip-hop, the bass was absolutely brainshaking. It did not smudge the rest of the frequency spectrum however, and you could still easily hear the rest of the recording with complete clarity. Sometimes I even inadvertantly focused on one instrument, and the seperation is so great that I found myself blocking out everything else (including bass) altogether.
The mids of the UE11's I found to be very similar to SE530's. Vocals and guitars and very clear and forward, but they had a little edge on the SE530's in that sometimes the clarity of guitars and vocals were almost analytical sounding. You could hear the guitar pick brushing off the strings and fingers sliding around the fretboard between chords, and hear the vocalist take tiny breaths before beginning phrases or hitting big notes.
Unfortunately for me, the clarity of the UE11's revealed flaws and artifacts in my lower-bitrate recordings I had never heard before. Fuzz and feedback from guitar amps stood out significantly more, the hiss on ill-recorded and mastered works stuck out like a sore thumb (For Mom from Buckethead's Colma album was nearly unbearable), and sometimes you could hear what I can only refer to as the sonic equivelant of pixelation on low quality video, like little digital scrambled noises in the background of low bitrate recordings. Oh well, guess I'll just have to re-rip my CD collection to 320kbps or higher.
Soundstage, or virtual plane with the UE11's is more expansive than other IEM's I've ever heard. I noticed this while listening to binaural recordings (Ultrasone's reference CD), and the difference is immediately noticeable. I've always been able to hear which direction and at what distance sound was coming from with binaural recordings, but with the UE11's, things that sounded far away sound even further away. The whole plane of sound is just wider, and that goes for all decently recorded music, not just binaural recordings.
For people who ask, "Is the difference in sound quality between SE530/UM2/Triple .fi/SA-6 etc. and UE11 enough to justify the huge price difference?" I say this: If you already own one of the aformentioned IEM's, the answer is no. The law of diminishing returns is truer here than ever before. Dollar for dollar all of the above mentioned IEM's outperform the UE11's. BUT if you don't already own any high-end IEM's and are on the fence as to whether to get a high-end universal or spend the extra $$ and get the UE11's, I would recommend the UE11's if you've got the cash. They really are an unbelievable sounding IEM, and are now my go-to reference headphones. I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.*
That about sums up my trip to UE, and now I have to go back to taking in the sunrays of Vegas, and nursing my brutal hangover after a long night with our 2 new Brazilian friends who we met at the casino in the wee hours. Hope you've enjoyed
- Jordan
So, after much contemplation, I finally decided to pull the trigger on a set of UE11's. At first I intended to find an audiologist in my area to do my impressions and mail them to UE. Then my friend Joaquin and I decided to fly to Las Vegas this week for a much-needed vacation, so I got to thinking, maybe I'll just pay UE a visit personally. Yesterday, that's what I did.
It was a 4 hour roadtrip to Irvine, California with a very reluctant but cooperative Joaquin riding shotgun after just whetting his appetite in Vegas the night before for the first time ever. In true fanboy fashion, as soon as I got to UE I pulled out the camera and started annoying everybody, all in the name of making this thread
This is me (sportin' a SWEET sunglasses tan!) getting my impressions done by Noy, UE's audiologist. You may remember him as the awkward asian man in UE's Youtube videos. They did this for free (Thanks UE!), and this way I know it was done right the first time.
This is an unbelievably and inexcuseably blurry picture of my impessions. I had about 2 seconds to snap that shot before Noy scooped them up and hurried them away to get them out the door before the cutoff for the day.
Here is a picture of a sweet lady who's name completely fails me at the moment, putting up with me snapping pictures of her as she took a breather from "welding" the faceplate onto a set of customs.
Next on the mini-production line was this lady, installing the components into a set of UE11's. The time and care these people put into making each set of customs is amazing. I'm pretty sure they were working on one pair for my entire stay at the lab.
In the next room is where the acrylic shells are made. They take a mold of your impressions, fill it with liquid acrylic, and place it into a little box where it is exposed to UV light for 10 seconds or so. This hardens the first layer of acrylic. They then pour the remaining acrylic out, and then expose the shell to UV light again for a minute or so to harden it. Very cool.
This shot is of a custom art job in progress. They laser engrave your picture of choice onto the shell, and then handpaint it after that. If anyone here has looked at the custom art section of UE's website, you too will probably have absolutely no idea how they manage to get the artwork so perfect.
My next picture was of myself with the lovely Jeanette Coffey, UE's customs department customer service manager, but on a promise to Jeanette, I cannot show it in this thread. She was very camera-shy and graceful enough to take a picture with me, and made me promise to not show it to anyone, so I've gotta stick to my word and omit this one. Too bad for you guys, she's a total knockout!
As far as UE's customer service goes, there is nothing I can say that will tell you how incredibly awesome my experience there was. From the minute I walked in the door to the time I walked back out of it they gave me (and Joaquin) the red carpet treatment. Jeanette gave me the grand tour of the lab, office and warehouse, took the time to introduce me to everyone at UE (who by the way, completely stopped what they were doing to meet and talk with me), and totally spoiled me every time she had a chance. She gave Joaquin and I both UE merchandise packages (pic below), threw in the extra cable, and an extension cable I had ordered for free, and get this: She took my number down, and called me this morning to tell me that she and Brad from UE had called around Vegas to reserve tickets to 2 shows for us this weekend! One is "Scintas" tonight at the Hilton, and the other is the Blue Man Group show at the Venetian tomorrow night! After everything she had already done for us, this completely blew me away. On top of that, she told me she'd get a picture of my UE11's up on the website. I've never experienced such great customer service in my entire life, and suffice it to say UE has secured my business for a very long time. Thanks a million, Brad and Jeanette! Even Joaquin, who is in no way an audiophile, decided to get a set of customs after the awesome experience we had. You'll probably see him on this board sometime in the near future asking you which amp to pair with his UE customs
This is the contents of our UE merch packages. As you can see its not your typical bumper sticker and keychain swag! The package included a UE t-shirt, engraved zippo lighter, engraved flask, sweatband, lanyard, and 2 sets of UE earplugs. I couldn't believe they gave us this stuff for free, nevermind gave it to us for free twice!
On the advice of Jeanette, we stopped by Laguna Beach on the way back to take in the sites, and although it took us probably 6 hours to get back to Vegas, it was well worth it. The only other picture I wish I could include in this thread is the picture of my shiny new UE11s, but that will have to wait for a couple of weeks until they are in my hands. The anticipation is killing me! I will edit this thread to include pictures of them, and a review when they arrive. (EDIT: Done!)
My new UE11's in all their glory!
*Initial impressions edit: Ok, I've had my UE's for a couple weeks now and have had time to get used to their sound signature, and I can safely say these are easily the best headphones I've ever listened to, full size cans included. My preferred IEM's prior to these were my trusty Shure SE530's, and although they are a great set of IEM's, they just can't hold a candle to these badboys.
There is a forwardness and depth to the UE11's sound that is absent in every IEM I've ever tried that I didn't even realize I was missing because I never knew it existed. I've always disagreed with people who said that SE530's have rolled-off highs. Well, I now humbly admit I was wrong about that. I listen to a lot of metal, and the very first thing I realized when listening to the UE11's was how seperated all the instruments sounded, despite the sometimes noisy nature of the genre. The second thing I noticed was the treble. I was listening to Divine Heresy's Savior Self and for the first time, I could hear the looseness of the drummer's hi-hat, and the timbre and resonance of the cymbals. This is quite a feat considering it has to be heard over very forward, loud and distorted guitars and vocals. Not an ounce of shrillness or sibilance to speak of, just clear, soaring highs. Very impressive.
The next thing I noticed was the unbelievable bass impact. I will say this right now: If you are not a big fan of bass, stay away from these. The bass is easily the most prominent part of the UE11's sound sig. It is far deeper and more impactful than UM2's and SE530's bass, if you can believe that. Yet at the same time it is not in the least bit muddy, in fact it is extremely controlled and smooth. I kept wondering how bass in such huge quantity could accomplish this. While listening to hip-hop, the bass was absolutely brainshaking. It did not smudge the rest of the frequency spectrum however, and you could still easily hear the rest of the recording with complete clarity. Sometimes I even inadvertantly focused on one instrument, and the seperation is so great that I found myself blocking out everything else (including bass) altogether.
The mids of the UE11's I found to be very similar to SE530's. Vocals and guitars and very clear and forward, but they had a little edge on the SE530's in that sometimes the clarity of guitars and vocals were almost analytical sounding. You could hear the guitar pick brushing off the strings and fingers sliding around the fretboard between chords, and hear the vocalist take tiny breaths before beginning phrases or hitting big notes.
Unfortunately for me, the clarity of the UE11's revealed flaws and artifacts in my lower-bitrate recordings I had never heard before. Fuzz and feedback from guitar amps stood out significantly more, the hiss on ill-recorded and mastered works stuck out like a sore thumb (For Mom from Buckethead's Colma album was nearly unbearable), and sometimes you could hear what I can only refer to as the sonic equivelant of pixelation on low quality video, like little digital scrambled noises in the background of low bitrate recordings. Oh well, guess I'll just have to re-rip my CD collection to 320kbps or higher.
Soundstage, or virtual plane with the UE11's is more expansive than other IEM's I've ever heard. I noticed this while listening to binaural recordings (Ultrasone's reference CD), and the difference is immediately noticeable. I've always been able to hear which direction and at what distance sound was coming from with binaural recordings, but with the UE11's, things that sounded far away sound even further away. The whole plane of sound is just wider, and that goes for all decently recorded music, not just binaural recordings.
For people who ask, "Is the difference in sound quality between SE530/UM2/Triple .fi/SA-6 etc. and UE11 enough to justify the huge price difference?" I say this: If you already own one of the aformentioned IEM's, the answer is no. The law of diminishing returns is truer here than ever before. Dollar for dollar all of the above mentioned IEM's outperform the UE11's. BUT if you don't already own any high-end IEM's and are on the fence as to whether to get a high-end universal or spend the extra $$ and get the UE11's, I would recommend the UE11's if you've got the cash. They really are an unbelievable sounding IEM, and are now my go-to reference headphones. I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.*
That about sums up my trip to UE, and now I have to go back to taking in the sunrays of Vegas, and nursing my brutal hangover after a long night with our 2 new Brazilian friends who we met at the casino in the wee hours. Hope you've enjoyed
I can't believe I live 45 minutes away and I am still hesitant to buy my UE-5Cs(Read:Soon to be broke college student). Its even worse that UC Irvine is only 10 minutes away, so I could really do some damage on my wallet, if I wanted.
