Had a few days of listening to the UM Multiverse Mentor demo and so I’ve been getting to know it better versus when I first listened to it at CanJam last month. Here’s some brief impressions on how I hear it:
Starting with just the big picture of the sound, I’d call it a warm leaning W-shaped sound, and so overall pretty balanced with no part of the frequency range dominating over the other. It’s got a tuning that lends itself to all-around listening / many genres and is easy to listen to (i.e. no shouty upper mids, piercing treble peaks or fatiguing bass, etc) while still being engaging (i.e. good macro dynamics).
The bass on Mentor is being done by BAs, and I’d say it’s an improvement over the last BA bass IEM I owned, the Phonix. Phonix’s bass (from memory) lacked the texture needed to avoid becoming a distraction from the greater whole during the time I owned it. Mentor’s bass texture is pretty good for a BA, and the decay isn’t super quick like some other BA IEMs, leading to more authenticity for bass guitar notes. It certainly doesn’t have the more drawn-out decay of bass notes like an EXT or Z1R, but it’s got enough that it isn’t distracting is the point. While there is good extension in the bass, don’t expect the sub bass to rumble like a DD along with that more perceivable moving air feeling that DDs have. I’m not hearing a particular focus on either mid or sub bass, and so Mentor’s bass seems pretty balanced between mid and sub.
The mids are warm and bodied. The sound is more natural, as if a thin layer of plastic was removed coming from Indigo (from memory), which had a timbre that that I felt was just ok for non-synthesized music. Vocals, and the midrange more broadly combined with the imaging precision and presentation are the star of the show for me on Mentor. The tuning seems to do equal just to both female and male vocals, including ones with deep voices such as Matt Berninger from
The National. The soundstage is more on the intimate side compared to Jewel, spreading less in width and notes imaging closer in front/sides of my head with large sized notes and great depth and height to the stage. It kind of gives a small room presentation where you’re really close the music, especially the vocalist, as other instruments are positioned more behind and to the sides relative to the vocals.
Treble is well extended by my standards and so no complaints from me here and there’s definitely an airy top end going on while still having enough lower treble energy (i.e. more than Jewel). One thing I was curious about when listening to Mentor is whether the treble had some coarseness to it, which is something I’d
sometimes get with Indigo depending on the track, but this hasn’t been a problem on the Mentor based on everything I’ve thrown at it in the past few days.
Noise floor performance is good on Mentor, not getting any hiss / waterfall noise when plugging into either the N8ii or WM1ZM2 (both high gain). Also, the 2-pin connection seems solid on the demo unit, but of course we’ll see if that’s still the case as more people get these in their hands to gauge from a larger sample size. I know Indigo has had issues with the 2-pin connector on some units.
To sum it up, Mentor goes for a warm, easy listening but still engaging sound while being very technical.
. Do you have an preference in prog rock or metal ? If so what's your go to iem ?
) while giving the tonal balance I needed. Does anyone with EVO/Mest family of BCDs have similar experience?
