Recording - May 2012 - 60

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Alclair Reference In-Ear Monitors
Sweet sound inside your head
before, ask your audiologist if it’s best to have the molds done while you’re keeping your mouth shut tightly, or while your jaw is propped open with a mouth guard. There is a right answer for each individual, but mine might not be the same as yours. What’s inside Alclair makes several different in-ears, each with slightly different electronics. The basic model is the $249 Alclair Dual, which has two armatures per ear, one tweeter and one woofer; they also make models with heavier (if less accurate) bass delivery. For this review, I was sent a pair of Alclair Reference in-ears, a $499 3way model with a tweeter, woofer, and midrange driver. When you order your in-ears, they can come in any of 16 colors or clear, with the faceplate (the part everyone sees when they are in your ears) being of a contrasting color. Custom colors, blends, and engraving are also available if you’re willing to spend a little extra. Other accessories (some included and some optional, depending on model purchased) include detachable cables of varying lengths, cleaning supplies, and—an omission I found strange—an adaptor to turn the existing rightangle 1/8" TRS plug into a 1/4". Come on, guys, you’re charging $3 extra for that? In the ears The second thing I noticed about these inears was how they handled bass frequencies. With in-ear monitors, the low end is a very different experience than it is with headphones, which are in turn very different in the lows than monitor speakers. Especially at lower frequencies, we hear with our entire bodies, feeling vibration and moving air... that’s why subwoofers are so exciting, and that’s something you don’t get with in-ears. What you do get is a sensation that the bass is there and very audible, tight and detailed. I listened to pipe organ, wellrecorded kit drums with properly miked kicks, deep synthesizers, and funk and jazz bass guitar tracks, and while the body-shaking rumble wasn’t there, the music most certainly was. Once you get used to simply hearing rather than feeling bass, the Alclairs let you hear into the lows and derive a lot of what you need to know about timbre and balance from what you’re hearing. You’re going to want to check your work on good-sized monitor speakers in a good room before it

Alclair is a small company near Minneapolis that takes delight in making custom in-ear monitors that sound as good as they look. While there are lots of in-ear monitors out there from a variety of companies—in recent years I’ve reviewed excellent products from Shure, M-Audio, Future Sonics, Ultimate Ears, NuForce, and others in these pages—Alclair’s monitors are custom-fit to the user. Ha ving a fit Before you order a pair, you visit your local audiologist and he or she squirts goop into your ears that hardens in place to form a perfect impression of your ear canals. Those molds are then sent to Alclair, and used as the basis for pouring liquid plastic around the multiple drivers that make up the in-ears’ electronics; when the plastic sets, you have a set of headphones that fit perfectly into your ears (and poorly, if at all, into anyone else’s). It is possible to have custom earmolds made for a variety of existing out-of-the-box in-ear monitors (Shures come immediately to mind, but there are others) to replace the “small/medium/large rubber rings or squishy foam” inserts that come with them. Some would even say this is a preferable way to go; you can try the in-ears with the generic inserts and see if you like the sound, and then customize them later, and you can always take the molds off and save them if you switch in-ears. Custom in-ears are a leap of faith; they’re often more expensive than off-the-shelf models, and if you don’t like the sound, you’re stuck with them. It’s rare that a magazine reviewer gets to listen to a set and communicate what he’s learned to the readership; hence my jumping at the chance. I had a set of impressions taken of my ears while at the NAMM Show in Anaheim last January, and waited with some trepidation for the in-ears to arrive. I have a long history of supposedly perfect molds that ended up not sealing properly, but this time was the charm. As a hint to those of you who have never done this
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RECORDING MAY 2012

Recording - May 2012

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