Recording - December 2016 - 32

case with a friction-fit sealed lid, engraved with your name.
Inside, you'll find a cleaning tool, a snap-on 1/4" TRS adaptor,
an inline buffer with impedance matching and gain pad for
airplane audio systems, and the Reference Remastered in-ears
themselves, which are custom-colored to order and stamped
with your initials in blue (left) and red (right).
When placing your order, you get to choose a 48" or 64"
braided cable with gold-plated TRS miniplug, in silver or black.
There's even an option for a 48" cable with a TRRS miniplug
and an inline iOS remote and mic for smartphone use, if you're
into the idea of earbuds that cost more than your iPhone...
These are 3-driver in-ears, with one balanced armature each
for lows, mids, and highs. The earmold is a triple bore design,
with one bore for highs and another concentric bore chambered for mids and lows. Some specs: input sensitivity 100 dB
@ 1 kHz/1mW, frequency response 5 Hz to 25 kHz (flat to
18 kHz according to UE Pro), 26 dB of noise rejection, and
35Ω impedance.
How it sounds
Unlike the UE Pro in-ears that offer redundant drivers to
boost specific parts of the frequency spectrum, the Reference
Remastered is intended to be flat, clear, and brutally honest.
And boy, is it ever. While no headphone can give you the full
experience of sound from speakers blending in a room, the RR
delivers fine detail, exceptional clarity, and a wonderfully balanced frequency response with no pushiness in the mids, thud
in the lows, or shriekiness in the highs. It took some listening

Ultimate Ears UE Pro Reference Remastered

BY MIKE METLAY

An exquisitely exacting monitor experience that tucks in a shirt pocket
The Ultimate Ears professional in-ear monitor lineup, UE Pro,
offers a little something for everyone, with products ranging
from the $399 universal-fit UE 900S for $399 up to the
$1350 custom-fit UE 18 PRO, with a whopping six balanced
armature drivers and a four-way passive crossover network.
In between those two extremes is a wide lineup of custom-fit
in-ears, with anywhere from two to six balanced armature drivers and passive crossover networks mated to a dual or triple
bore (the holes through which audio reaches your eardrums).
There are models customized for users who want more
midrange cut (like vocalists), or more bass boom (like DJs and
drummers)... but today, we're reviewing the newest UE Pro inear: the UE Pro Reference Remastered.
What you get
According to the firm's website, the Reference Remastered
was designed in collaboration with the famed Capitol Studios
in Hollywood, and "based on the sounds of their state-of-theart facility". We have no idea what that means; there is literally no other information on this collaboration to be found anywhere. Fortunately, for a professional user who's more interested in results than name recognition, this lack of information
simply allows us to judge the RR based entirely on its own merits, which is exactly what we're going to do.
The RR is a custom-fit in-ear monitor; that means that your
order begins with a visit to an audiologist to have goop squirted in your ears (we recommend trimming any ear hair you
may have beforehand-your audiologist will thank you). The
molds created from this process are then sent to UE Pro, which
uses them to create a pair of in-ears that are customized for
your ears and no one else's.
You know you have something special the moment you open
the box: the RR comes in a cylindrical machined aluminum
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RECORDING DECEMBER 2016

for me to acclimatize myself not to expect boomy overwhelming bass all the time!
Since the RR is custom-fitted, comfort and sound isolation are
unparalleled, and they can be worn for hours (at reasonable listening levels!). Like any good control-room headphone, the RR
serves as an audio microscope for rooting out problems in
tracks and mixes. If you do a lot of tracking and listening in the
high-resolution realm, these in-ears will let you relish every
detail, all the way down to the noise floor, where you can hear
the difference between analog tape hiss and digital dither.
If, on the other hand, you prefer your tracking and mixing
"quick and dirty" and think that low-bitrate MP3s sound just
fine as they are, you should probably steer clear of these inears. Listening to 128k MP3s created for an online radio station, I found that the Reference Remastered let me pick out,
with some reliability, which tracks were run through a goodquality codec vs. the ones that were crunched with no regard
for final quality. In simple terms: you hear everything.
Final thoughts
My only complaint is that while the machined metal case
with your name engraved is classy, it's a pain to carry around
with you. I repurposed a small rigid-plastic zipper case from
another set of in-ears so I could easily tuck the RR in a pocket
and take them anywhere.
What happened to those other in-ears? They went in a
drawer, with nearly all the other in-ears I've used over the past
couple of decades. Thanks to the Reference Remastered, I find
I don't miss them much. Ultimate Ears indeed....
Price: $999
More from: Ultimate Ears/UE Pro, pro.ultimateears.com/rr

http://pro.ultimateears.com/rr

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