CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => IEM Measurements => Topic started by: Marvey on July 11, 2012, 10:50:28 PM
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This is my personal pair and it actually does sound less bright than UERM #2 (of which I will post the measurements later)
(http://www.changstar.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=398.0;attach=3626;image)
The re-iterate: Plots will not go past 9kHz for various reasons. Burst decays will be used instead of CSDs. Right channel is intentionally dropped 1 db.
Reminder: stuff past 9k is probably inaccurate. Especially the sharp peaks. Those peaks are the effect of the ear canal and the IEM. Personally I don't think they are heard as measured.
V2 = new compensation model.
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But your measurements don't go past 10kHz. These are worthless. >:( WTF!? :-Z
Sorry....couldn't help the typical head-fi'er response. :)p2 Awesome job dude! :)p10 :)p3
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wow.. that is impressive. can't wait to listen to it ..measurements aren't everything you see. Its finally what you perceive. Everyone hears differently.
There, that's a better Head-fi response haha ;D
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Question on reading the burst decay graph:
For the sub-50hz frequencies, there seems to be a dip, followed by a peak. If it happens with headphones isn't that usually attributed to resonance? I think I'm reading it wrong :(
The FR looks great though. I definitely plan to get UERMs soon.
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No idea what's happening there in the sub frequencies for the burst decay. Figure I'll keep posting until we see correlate patterns with sonic qualities or determine it's just random.
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I feel like I'm missing out with IEMs. No matter what I do or what type of tip I use, I can never get a proper fit or seal. Oh well...still cool to see you doing IEM measurements! These look pretty damn nice.
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Marv, are these response curves compensated? If it effectively measures flat at the entrance of ear canal, I can't imagine how these earphone can't be perceived as tonally neutral.
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Still, they are my favorite phones. And, the ones that I would choose- if I had to pick just one flavor. :)p5
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Excited to try these out at the August meet. If I like them I might sell off my other equipment to fund the purchase of these.
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Yes. They are compensated based on modified diffuse field EQ. Been doing them by ear comparing with other neutral references, i.e. my desktop near-field monitors, and with input from people who I trust. There may be a few tweaks here and there...
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Ok, that explains. So, from that standpoint, the UERM is fairly close to your ideal iem then it seems! I believe you do the same for your regular headphone measurements with your original baffle plate, right?
The only thing that I could not get my head around is how you calibrated your self made couplers. I think I now understood how you did it: using test tones and loudness matching a headphone / earphone against your reference desktop speaker rig, then measuring that equalized headphone (to your ears, for your setup) through your couplers in order to set the "0dB" line.
Very convoluted process but I don't see any other way if you're not using a dummy with calibration chart...
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Marv, thanks for the honest reply. As I told you before when we were working out the CSD calculator, in some ways you are so much more ingenious than many engineers I deal with in my work, you've missed a carrier man ! Or, you're probably an even smarter
programmer :)p1
I actually place myself almost in the box of the self-appointed expert with more questions after every answer though :-00 . I may have a fairly good bit of experience in all sorts of testing and simulations in the field of vibro-acoustics. But when it comes to headphones, I still consider myself as close to clueless and it probably shows up in the questions. I appreciate your effort to share your findings.
Cheers,
Arnaud
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Has anyone seen an impedance vs. frequency plot for the UERM?
Reason I'm asking has to do with the AK100. In theory, it and its 22 ohm output impedance should be a questionable match for the UERM (nominal impedance 21 ohm@1kHz). However, Chris at CA used UE11 Pros in his evaluation of the AK100, liked it a lot, and didn't mention any of the potential issues that one would expect if there were a bad impedance mismatch. Which is especially surprising since, when Stereophile measured the UE11 Pro, it found the impedance to be right around 10 ohm from 50 Hz to about 800 Hz before a spike to the published spec of 18 ohm @ 1kHz.
I suppose I could just buy the thing, try it with my UERM, and if I don't like what I'm hearing in ways that are consistent with an impedance mismatch, send it off to RWA to be modded. If there isn't a problem, I saved $200 vs. the cost of a pre-modded RWAK 100.
Decisions, decisions. I hate existential anguish! :vomit:
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I'll take a measurement when I get a chance. Work suddenly got busy for me.
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I'll take a measurement when I get a chance. Work suddenly got busy for me.
Much appreciated. No rush. Clients come first (says the guy who's still in the office at 22:37).
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Anyone could comment on how similar (or dissimilar) the UERM is with regard to Etymotic ER4P?
I am not particularly impressed with the C4 and may just go for the UERM.
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Considered the F111?
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Considered the F111?
I did but I am worried about potential fit issue as I had one with the TG!334 which eventually led me to sell it away. Prefer a CIEM if possible.
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Anyone could comment on how similar (or dissimilar) the UERM is with regard to Etymotic ER4P?
I am not particularly impressed with the C4 and may just go for the UERM.
uelover, besides the C4's 4khz suckout you perceived and the long wait times...what else do you not like about it?
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Anyone could comment on how similar (or dissimilar) the UERM is with regard to Etymotic ER4P?
I am not particularly impressed with the C4 and may just go for the UERM.
uelover, besides the C4's 4khz suckout you perceived and the long wait times...what else do you not like about it?
Three things regarding the sound:
1) In congested passage, separations is not the best and sometimes instruments may get lumped together, making it hard to differentiate one from the other.
2) The highs of the C4 is recessed relative to the mids and lows, and especially around 4khz. This negatively affected the tonality of vocals and instruments.
3) Timbre on the TG!334 and Tzar 350 is better.
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This makes me glad I decided to go with the UERMs (got my impressions and placed the order last week, crystal clear no logos). I am not experienced in this field, and the only set of serious IEMs I have are UE SuperFi 5 Pros, so my word wont be of much use when I get them.
I was tossed between the UERMs and the C4s for my first CIEM. Ultimately the C4 drove me away from a couple of angles:
1) Reported issues with waiting and customer service.
2) The measurements. I know this should be taken with a grain of salt, but people did report the dip when listening to sweeps and that unsettled me a little for a ~$1000 neutral/reference IEM.
3) The fact that they are being outsourced to China.
The reason this last point was a particular concern for me, is that (correct me if I'm wrong) I'm under the impression that the pair LFF got were made by the crew in UK before the product went full production. So, it stands to reason with them being new to town and changing to outsourcing that consistency issues may pop up, i.e. the famous LFF pair may not be indicative of the actual performance. uelover, your report of color issues made me go 'phew' too. I am adamant about having them crystal clear, no logos, minimalistic, and I would have been pissed to have them arrive with smoke faceplates, especially given the CS issues making sending them back painful.
I simply trust UE a lot more, and I think Frogbeats is a gamble that has yet to prove itself definitively. On that note, the UE customer service is very good. My father has a very positive history of dealing with them, and I have been just as happy so far. After chatting on the phone, Brian at UE sent me to Julie Glick for impressions and told me I wouldn't even need the instructions. She meets with the UE crew regularly, knows the products and procedures very well, and even placed my order for me. She also has demos of all the UE line and the JH line, but I missed this opportunity since her office was under renovation. She's also keen on taking good impressions. She inspected mine after they were done, took a look at the left one and said 'ehhhh.....let's just redo this one', no charge of course. Could I have done some of these things and paid attention to some of these details myself? Sure. But when you're dropping $1000, it's nice to just pay the money and have people take care of you.
If you are near NYC and want to check the UERMs out, I'd definitely recommend paying her a visit. Her office renovations should be done now.
Sorry for the wall o text, but I figured I'd share my thoughts in case anyone else is on the same fence.
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Dove, I think you've got a good handle on the situation.
You were smart to go with an experienced audiologist. Andrew Resnick is another good one (Future Sonics, JHA, Westone dealer as well) in NYC.
If the flat sound is what you want, then you've made a great choice with the UERM. It's very good.
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She's also keen on taking good impressions. She inspected mine after they were done, took a look at the left one and said 'ehhhh.....let's just redo this one', no charge of course. Could I have done some of these things and paid attention to some of these details myself? Sure. But when you're dropping $1000, it's nice to just pay the money and have people take care of you.
Same thing happened w/ mine when Michael West of Westone did mine. Left side wasn't perfect so he redid them. Always a good sign.
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I actually live in the Boston area, but was visiting family so it made sense to do impressions in NYC.
Re flat sound, I want something I can trust more than I can trust my own preferences, if that makes sense. My ears get used to a headphone or eq setting, and then sometimes a change will seem dramatic and after I get used to it I wonder how I ever dealt with the previous setup. So, I want a reference I can trust to be as 'true' as possible. If I decide I want to color it with eq (probably wont), I want to be consciously making that choice. As a physicist by trade, having something precolored or having significant bumps/drops in FR just doesn't appeal to me from a geek viewpoint.
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I think you'll be pleased. After all the IEMs I've gone through, the UERM is still the best tool I have for ABing portable gear. Should say something.
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Glad to hear it.
I had some slight reservations at the accusations of them being 'bass light' since I do enjoy bassy music (electronica and such), but ultimately I decided it was far more important to me that they be true to the recording. Not to mention, I get the sense that the accusers are ignorant, as likely comes with the Beats-esque culture that has developed. I intend to use these for 'everything': enjoying music, criticizing music and recording, movies/tv, maybe gaming, internet conversation/calling, and so on (perhaps even some form of experimentation). So, I don't want something tailored for a specific purpose and I especially don't want something that overblows certain features for the sake of sensationalism. Do I want the ability to feel pounding bass? Sure, but it better have been demanded by the source if it shows up. i.e. I don't prescribe to the notion of letting a user's piece of equipment do the job an engineer ought to have, nor redoing a job that was done properly and with intentions.
Based on what everyone's saying, it seems I made the right choice. So, despite my lack of experience, I'll be sure to post my thoughts when I get them to add another data point for those that may be in the same situation.
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My UERM is certainly not bass light, it's one of the best aspects of my pair, IMO.
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The bass is not a problme. If you're used to most iems, then it'll be great, even. A few iems have better sub-bass and some people like the bass from a vented dynamic driver set-up, but hey, generally the UERM is more than fine with bass.
You made a good decision, based on what you've written.
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I have just placed an order for the UERM. Ear impression shipped out. Let's see how long it shall take...
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You're based in Singapore right? I'm interested in the turn around time for your UERMs. Pretty much everyone else orders CIEMs with local distributors.
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You're based in Singapore right? I'm interested in the turn around time for your UERMs. Pretty much everyone else orders CIEMs with local distributors.
Yes Singapore. There is no local distributor for UE CIEM.
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Just received this. The whole thing screams quality.
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Nice! I'm expecting mine in the next few weeks. I finally caved in and joined the cool kids.
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I got mine ~2 weeks ago. I'll probably get around to posting thoughts in another week or so. For now, I'll just say that I am *very* happy :)p7
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I'm a little surprised that the UERM didn't make it to the Inner Fidelity "Wall of Fame". I enjoy them more than the original JH13, but unfortunately haven't had a chance to hear the FreqPhase update.
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I was a little surprised too. From what I've read, they are still the best neutral reference, and the JH13 (even freqphase) supposedly has a bit of color particularly in the mid/upper bass. Perhaps others can chime in here.
I'm itching to see some ES5 and JH13 Freqphase measurements now. The latter raises the topic of phase frequency response measurements, which I imagine would be a tough thing to pull off on IEMs (although, I guess JH has been doing them). I wonder how bad the phase curve is for the UERMs.
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Freqphase is just a fancy marketing term. It could very well be that that JH13FP has excellent phase response, but it's debatable whether phase response is that important to sonics, particularly with music. Most music we listen to will have phase errors introduced at the microphone, mixing console, mastering, etc. EQ will always mess up phase response, and EQ can and is often applied at each step of music production.
The UERM have an incredibly "messed up" phase response. Most three to four way speakers using rigid materials will have messed up phase responses because of the crossovers required to make them work. The speaker manufacturer Thiel also believes in the "freqphase" concept for lack of a better term. Unfortunately, their latest speaker I heard sounded like someone banging aluminum pots and pans together - probably because Thiel prioritized "coherent phase" over a crossover design with a steep enough slope to eliminate the higher frequency resonances on their metal drivers (all speculation on my part without measurements.)
BTW. Some of the Monster IEMs (Turbine, Lady Gaga, Miles Davis, etc.) have excellent, that is almost perfect, phase response characteristics. Better than the JH13FP.
The JH13FP is awesome because it uses "Awesome", not "Freqphase".
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Stupid marketing aside, the freq-phase versions sound noticeably better to me.
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They do sound really good. Whenever I don't know why something sounds good, I blame it on Craig's HF heaters, so I'll go with that.
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The design of the cable didn't get any mention either - which to me was icing on the cake for making a decision between the JH and UE. The socket connector is a much better design. I have to say that the Apple / " i " cable is also excellent. The 3.5mm jack is tapered to fit in an iPhone with a case and the microphone / volume adjuster with clip seems like a design feature and not an after thought that the other company thought was acceptable.
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At least regards overall phase, it seems I personally can't tell the difference. However, I imagine that relative phase is quite important for sonics. For example, imagine we have a source emitting two pairs of sinusoidal tones, the first pair is centered at 100 Hz and separated by 1/2 Hz, the second pair is at 1000 Hz and separated by 1/2 Hz. Within each pair, the frequencies are close enough for your brain to perceive the interference, while the two base frequencies are far enough apart that your brain ought to hear them separately. If they are all in phase, then one will hear two tones, 100 Hz and 1000 Hz, each beating in amplitude once per second and doing so in perfect unison. If the phase difference between the first pair is different from the phase difference between the second pair, one of these beating tones will be temporally offset with respect to the other, and this would definitely be audible. This could certainly be the case with a really crappy phase response. Although, I suppose the lesson learned from this example is that the only thing that matters for such timing is that the phase response not differ too quickly over small frequency ranges. So, perhaps then all that matters is that the absolute value of the derivative of the phase response is sufficiently small over all frequencies. I imagine that this is probably true of most phase fuckups, and thus why we don't hear such glaring issues in timing in practice.
On the other hand, I have heard a bit about the dependence of concepts like soundstage and imaging on things like fine details of phase, timing, and so on. So, now I'm wondering, could all these phase fuckups introduced in EQ'ing, recording, and even at the headphones be together responsible for a good portion of why most recordings fall short of sounding truly 'realistic'?
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The design of the cable didn't get any mention either - which to me was icing on the cake for making a decision between the JH and UE. The socket connector is a much better design. I have to say that the Apple / " i " cable is also excellent. The 3.5mm jack is tapered to fit in an iPhone with a case and the microphone / volume adjuster with clip seems like a design feature and not an after thought that the other company thought was acceptable.
The line remote aside (I didn't want that option so I didn't go for it), the cable is simply of top notch quality - the braiding, the durability, the 3.5mm connector and the recessed socket. They are all made of high quality that are not only pleasant to the sight but also designed to last. I have not seem such qualities even in the over US$300 aftermarket cables. Kudos to UE really, I will get their stock cable over aftermarket cable anytime, for they win in ergonomics, design, and durability.
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My UERM arrived. It took about two weeks from placing my order until they arrived.
This is my second UE custom, I also have the UE-11. I feel like I've got everything covered between the two of them. If i could only have one I think I'd pick the UERM, but that doesn't mean the 11 won't get plenty of use.
I used my old molds after some discussions with the UE gang. We had a good idea that they would be OK since I recently had to replace one side of the 11's after a terrible accident (I stepped on it) and the fit was good. This time the fit is perfect again. Construction and finish continue to be excellent.
I won't mess around with describing the sound, enough has been said. If you're looking for a reference CIEM, look no further. If you want to spice them up then throw a little EQ at it, if you feel like you really have to.
I was worried they might be a little too analytical and become fatiguing or overbearing on long listens; not for me. I've been rocking them for long hours all week.
One thing I'd like to throw out there is that in my experience the proper seal of the final custom and the final tuning of the ports inside the canal always make the custom sound much better to me than the universal demos. This was especially true for low end impact and general "fullness" of the UERM for me.
UE has improved the interior of the already very nice metal storage box that's included. I'd always recommend that you get that large box with your order and then add the smaller one from the available accessories to use on the go.
This has been another great experience with UE for me. I know there are a lot of options out there now, but I couldn't be happier with the customer service and CIEMs I've received from UE.
There are good reasons so many pirates dig the UERM!
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I have been thinking about picking up a pair of these to use while drumming. Do they completely plug the ears and isolate from outside noise? I had some customs made from Westone and one of the ears, while "isolating" lets more high frequency outside noise in than the other. Westone has that molding inner canal thing so I am afraid that the less isolating side is more what I would expect from the all hard shell UERM.
thoughts?
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They completely plug the ears. There is no leakage if you get your fit the way it should be. The UERM isolates around -26dB. I find the isolation to be very good.
I'm not sure if it blocks more high or low frequencies, maybe @CEE TEE can help with that?
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Westones isolate more than UE, no question. Sounds like you have a fit issue on one side?
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Thanks, Ship! Raif...lemme know if you want to hear the UE demos again. I have them all. :&
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Definitely a fit issue with my current iems, but I was just curious if the looser fit might be more indicative of seal without westone's pliable construction. It is good to know that the uerm "plugs" the ears.
Thanks for the offer CEE TEE, much appreciated but I am definitely sold on the sound.
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Westones isolate more than UE, no question. Sounds like you have a fit issue on one side?
My UERM isolates better than my ES5...
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Your ES5 must be wrong then. Perhaps your vinyl tips shrunk or dried out? I always leave fresh lube on mine after I'm done to preserve the vinyl as it leaves a protective film/barrier.