First weekend with my Ulimate Ears 4.0 Customs

[jimivaughnking]

I know lots of people are looking at these so i thought I'd post my initial review after 2 gigs this past weekend.

 

A quick history. The whole band has been using IEM's since the middle of 2009, approx 80 gigs now. The singer has a PSM600. I have an AT M2 and the other 3 guys each have their own PSM200. I started with the stock M2 ear buds and shortly moved to a pair of M-Audio IE10 universal fit buds. These were a huge improvement in sound quality but I couldn't get a good fit. I also had trouble keeping the M2 buds in my ears.

 

Being tired of messing with these things every couple of songs I bit the bullet and went with the UE 4 customs with the ambient ports (for and extra $50). The audiologist who made my molds told me I have really small ear canals with a pretty sharp bend which is why the universals weren't working. It took 3 weeks to get the customs back after mailing off my impressions which I was very happy about.

 

The fit on these things is AMAZING! This alone is worth the price. I put them in once and never adjusted them at all. I could also run my pack at a much lower volume than normal because the fit was so much better.

 

The sound quality is really good. An improvement over the IE10's but part of that could be the fit. I wouldn't necessarily rave about it but I could hear clearly everything I wanted.

 

The isolation, even with the ambient port was surprising. I really could hear almost no outside noise. I would say that if I had started using IEM with these customs it would have been much harder to make the adjustment to IEM. Having a more gradual process through using the universal buds where I could definitely hear my guitar amp and drums live to the customs where I actually had to add some drums to my monitor mix has a better process. If i ordered again I wouldn't pay for the ambient ports but I would definitely buy these again. At $400 and a 3 week turn around time with a customized hard case I don't think many other products compete. I bought these after they made Premier Guitar's list of 100 best products for 2010 and I have to agree.