Product Review: Page (1) of 2 - 10/20/06

email article

print page

Ultimate Ears triple.fi 10 Pro Earphones High-end triple-driver earphones are a great value By Charlie White

What an assignment! My tough duty consisted of listening to music for hours on end, testing the world-class Ultimate Ears triple.fi 10 Pro earphones ($400). They're called triple.fi because of their three drivers, all balanced together for the ultimate sound experience. Taking this rough duty seriously, I fed a variety of music into them from various sources, from MP3s to iPod audio to uncompressed DVD audio. Come with me into the stratosphere of earphones, where professionals will be delighted with their clarity and amateurs will be startled when they hear parts of familiar music they've never encountered.

The triple.fi earphones make a remarkably good impression nestled in their special packaging the company calls a "roadie case." It came to us inscribed with my name on the front, and with the buckle on the front and rounded metal sides, they resemble the anvil cases that are so popular with video professionals and, well, roadies with rock 'n roll bands That alludes to the popularity of Ultimate Ears higher-end earphones used by numerous rock 'n roll musicians for live performance monitoring.

The triple.fi.earphones arrive in a "roadie case."

Those highest of high-end Ultimate Ears earphones require the user to obtain a mold of the ear canal, resulting in a perfect seal between earphone and ear. It's a little more complicated with these triple.fi earphones; a fit kit is included with five different sizes of earpieces inside. Trying out all of them, I found one that made a perfect seal with my ears. Still, I wouldn't mind having a custom-fit earpiece for an even more perfect seal, since that's so important to the overall sound of these earphones.

The earphones themselves are packed inside this attractive metal box inside the roadie case.

Inserting the earphones is similar to other high-end earphones of this type such as the Shure E5C, where you bring the wire over your ear and have the earphones going into your ears from the top. The wire on these triple.fi earphones is rigid near the part that goes into your ears, so you can lightly clamp them onto your ears and hide the cable behind your ears at the same time. While they weren't the most comfortable earphones I've ever inserted, the result is a near-perfect fit that allows all of the sound to go into your ears. 

After admiring the cool metallic blue finish of these diminutive instruments, it was time to insert them in my ears. Unfortunately, with these bleary middle-aged eyes it was difficult to see the small letter R and L signifying which phone went into which ear, but after I had used them for a few days, I became familiar enough with them to quickly determine which one went where.

Plugging them into the best sound source I had -- directly the sound output of the high-end stereo receiver that was plugged into a DVD player playing back a DVD audio disc -- the first sound I heard coming out of these earphones was downright startling. There was clarity of sound and smooth cleanliness I had never experienced before. Socking me from the low register was the sound of the firmest bass I'd ever encountered, going all the way down to the lowest tones that were present on that disc.

Gradually moving my listening attention between various sources and types of music, it didn't take long for me to realize that there is hardly any audio source that's good enough for these phones. Listening to MP3s, it became immediately obvious how deficient that format is, with its in-your-face distortion and compression artifacts throughout the sonic range. Even listening to lightly-compressed 192kbps tunes revealed their deficiencies. Even so, these MP3s sounded better than they had ever sounded before. 

Page: 1 2 Next Page

Related Sites: Digital Producer ,   IBC News ,   BN - Broadcast Newsroom ,   Digital Post Production ,   Digital Pro Sound ,   Oceania ,   CEN - Consumer Electronics Net ,   CEN - Audio ,   BN - Production ,   BN - Hardware
Related Newsletter: DMN Newsletter ,   Waveform Newsletter ,   Timeline Newsletter ,   Loud Newsletter ,   Digital Media Net ,   DMNForums ,   CEN - Gadgets Newsletter ,   Review Seeker

---