Monday, April 13, 2009

Last Week Most Interesting

Before I served up the main course, here is a mildly interesting new IEM 'series' made by an online radio company - The Radiopaq Tuned Earphone. It really makes me wondering, has IEM became such a lucrative business that any company will jump into it in first sight? Nevertheless, the idea behinds tuning IEM is not new, but creating four differently tuned IEM might not be that bright of an idea. Despite the fact that Radiopaq making claim that each tuned IEM can be used on different genre of music, the first thing that comes to my mind is, why bother with four choices when you can buy one from a competitor that claims to handle all type of music just well? Hmm.... could be a tough sale there.
  • Driver unit: Single 10mm dynamic transducer
  • Frequency Response: 18Hz~20 kHz
  • Impedance: 16 ohm
  • Sensitivity: 120dB / 1 mW
  • Plug: 3.5mm
  • Cable length: 1.2m
Here is the real 'bomb' of last week - the announcement of Westone UM3X, a three-ways universal IEM. If you keep track on IEM news, you'll know that Westone already released a similar IEM few months ago - the Westone 3. While Westone already has the ES3X as their flagship custom fit IEM, we all assumed Westone 3 is their flagship universal IEM, I guess we are all wrong. The question is of course why Westone want to have two similar models of three-ways universal IEM that essentially compete with each other? I truly don't know. Westone has made it clear that UM3X is "using the same technology as our custom ES3X*, the UM3X is the earpiece of choice for performers desiring high-end Westone sound quality in a universal-fit package" - I guess that means UM3X is tuned more for monitoring purpose instead of Westone 3 more musical approach. In any case, as Westone UM2 owner, I am much more interested in UM3X than Westone 3.
  • Driver unit: Three balanced armature drivers with a passive three-way crossover
  • Frequency Response: 20Hz~18 kHz
  • Impedance: 56 ohm
  • Sensitivity: 124dB / 1 mW
  • Plug: 3.5mm
(*In case you didn't notice, UM3X and ES3X share identical spec)

3 comments:

JItin said...

Hi there, thanks for some awesome guides.

I need one little help from you. Going to buy new IEMs. I have shortlisted these two

- SoundMagic PL30 pro
- Philips SHE 9800 SoundStage

Mainly I would go for whichever has better bass. Can you help me with a little comparison?

Tai (aka ClieOS) said...

Thought I haven't heard SHE9800 before, I am pretty sure it will have better bass than PL30 - mainly because PL30 really have very little bass to speak of.

Jitin said...

Thanks, I am going for She 9800 today, i will post my review just like you ^.^

Thanks a lot!

Post a Comment

Amazon's Deal

Disclaimer: All trademarks and logos in the website belong to their respective owners. Beside getting free review samples, I don't work for or get paid by anyone to post anything on this website, or anywhere else in that matter. Also, free review samples are never sold. I do buy gears and review them, but for simplicity you (the reader) should always assume what I review is free sample in nature. The website does have Google Ads and Amazon Associates enabled - though I don't write review for a living, nor does the ads generates enough money to cover my breakfast (in fact, not even one breakfast per week). Listening to music and playing with audio gears are purely hobby for me.

Note: All postings are my own personal opinion only and should not be treated as absolute truth. Always do your own research!

Recent Comments

 
Copyright 2008-2012 In Ear Matters. Powered by Blogger Blogger Templates create by Deluxe Templates. WP by Masterplan