Bassic Review – Ultimate Ears Pro PREMIER In-Ear Monitors

You’ve read about in-ear monitoring options – commonly referred to as IEM or IEMs – in our pages before (including several from Ultimate Ears), and for good reason. The trend towards direct, personal monitoring in medium-sized and larger performance scenarios has only increased over the last several years, and shows no sign of slowing. Now, even some hobbyists are incorporating IEMs into their rig to reap the benefits of in-ear monitoring; namely, external noise rejection, improved perception of transients and articulation, ability to add-in cues and tracks the audience shouldn’t hear, and full-spectrum audio reproduction. This represents an interesting challenge for bassists – finding a suitable offering that satisfies our need for the depth and low-end heft we’re used to hearing through the air, pushed by 1,000-watt heads and multiple large-diameter speakers!

Now PREMIERing

If you’re the kind of person who loves superlatives and seeks out the biggest/best/most/finest things, you’re going to love UE Pro’s new PREMIER model, with its record-shattering 21 onboard drivers (per ear). That’s right! No simple 3-way, 5-way, or even 8-driver system here. The UE Pro PREMIER deals nothing less than an auditory blackjack. How do they manage to fit all that into the housing of something that fits into a normal sized ear? Well it breaks down like this: the audio signal path is broken up into five segments (using a 5-way crossover) that reproduces incoming audio via two sets of dual-driver subs (that’s four drivers in total), a whopping four sets of low-mid drivers, four midrange drivers, one “True Tone Plus” driver that handles upper mids/low treble, and tops it all off with four “High Super Tweeters” to bring you all the sound you can hope to perceive between an inaudibly lowly 5 cycles per second to an exceedingly superhuman 40 kHz.

This is all packaged into an admittedly girthy housing, but one that nonetheless remains seated perfectly in the ear canal and pinna, and capped by your choice of faceplate colors and textures (or even a swappable faceplate system for an additional $199), an optional ambient sound port that rejects 12 dB less when unplugged, and a waterproof and robust connection system that makes use of UE Pro’s SuperBAX cabling. When inserted correctly and the ambient feature (if selected) is plugged, the PREMIER offers 26 dB of sound rejection, allowing you to use very reasonable and non-damaging monitoring levels, which is one of the central points of in-ear monitoring. Additionally, the sensitivity of the drivers likely ranks above any speaker cabinet you’ve ever used, at an impressive 126 dB @ 1 kHz/1 meter, making more efficient use of the wattage they’re fed. The California-made PREMIER requires up to roughly a 25-day turnaround period to be produced from either scans you have on file with UE Pro or physical impressions from an audiologist you send them.

UE Pro has their presentation down pat. The PREMIER ship in a wonderfully designed package that oozes quality, featuring a book-opening-style top flap that reveals the product suspended in high-density foam and your personalized protective hard case below them on the right-hand side, and a beautifully minimalistic statement and QR code on the inside of the top cover. Opening the hard case, you’ll find a cleaning tool, the removable SuperBAX cabling, and a nice, branded microfiber cleaning cloth. Seeing my name printed on the outside of that case was undeniably a nice touch and came as a surprise, and the product itself is so attractive, with its customizable colored faceplates and surrounding trim, it makes a wonderful first impression upon unboxing.

Heard That

I used the PREMIER exclusively for about two months’ worth of shows and private music listening, auditioning them on planes, in loud club venues, one outdoor festival, and sitting in my studio. I fed them with a MOTU audio interface, a Shure PSM300 wireless system, my phone, and other devices. I didn’t once have an issue with the cabling, any errant driver in either side, a problem with the shells or any other technical aspect of the product. They are extremely well made, exceedingly finely fit-and-finished, and unerring in their function and reproduction. I perceived all the low end and low-mid bass frequencies I needed to, while rejecting a great amount of external noise that can sometimes mask some of this area due to the ear’s poor perception of it (see: Fletcher Munson curve), and I certainly didn’t have any trouble hearing every single nuance of articulation, stereo separation, metallic cymbal-y “zing” and upper stratosphere “air” in whatever I listened to. Contrary to the performance of some in-ear systems, they even sounded great on most of the commercially produced music I listened to through them, if not a bit mid-forward. In short, they did everything I needed them to do, without ever balking or allowing any room for doubt of their reliability or performance.

The shells stayed well seated in my ear canals and formed a complete seal up to the point of only the most extreme, unrealistic jaw movement, performing at least as well as any other custom-fit IEMs or musicians’ earplugs product I’ve used, and were quick to reform that seal when very slightly breached by my facial contortion antics. They were comfortable enough to wear for several hours at a time on a long gig or on a plane, which is something that sets them apart from other similar products I’ve used.

The quick-connect cables inspire tons of confidence, being of a sturdy, seemingly relatively large gauge wire and protective covering, and the UE PRO-produced IPX connectors themselves gave me the impression they’d last years and years without failure.

The Necessity of Luxury

Of course, you know that we at Bass Gear Magazine are in-depth examiners of all the gear we cover, and not in the business of simply publishing commercials for any manufacturer or product. You know and expect that we’re going to address all aspects of a product honestly, from performance to value, and more. To that end we’re not blind to some of the skepticism of the driver count and cost of the PREMIER. So now to address the questions of design and value we’ve seen: “…but do you really NEED 21 drivers? Does it NEED to cost that much?” There are many ways to answer this. Do you really need that extra cup holder in your car? Does your car really need to be of the pedigree it is over a functional and effective, but decidedly less prestigious/new/monetarily valuable model in the first place? Is that Warwick or Fodera or MTD bass really necessary to play the root-5-root-5 upstate country casino or classic rock cover band gigs you’re actually playing on a regular basis?

Those are obviously rhetorical questions, because need, above and beyond satisfactory functionality, is largely subjective. The UE PREMIER employs the type and number of drivers that it does to achieve the specifications UE Pro’s engineers wanted, producing a top-tier product, that is then valued and marketed in accordance with the company’s beliefs and the marketplace’s allowance. For the sake of complete transparency, I found the PREMIER to excel at the tasks I asked of it, first and foremost. From a bass player’s and producer’s perspective, I can’t say that I experienced response that stood head and shoulders above all other products in this stratum of this category, but at no point did I find the PREMIER’s output lacking in any area, and once you’re comparing products in a high performance tier, just as with instruments, cars, and virtually everything else, subjectivity comes heavily into play and elements aside from and beyond pure performance start to differentiate and endear products to one player or another.

If you’re the type of player that has the interest and the means to employ gear that’s arguably among the highest caliber in its class, bar none, you should definitely investigate the UE PREMIER to satisfy your personal monitoring needs and tastes. This model is not entry level, and thus shouldn’t be expected to comprise the best value for all levels of consumer, but no matter who slides a pair of custom-molded PREMIER into their ears, they will certainly not be disappointed.

* All specifications are as claimed by the manufacturer, and have not been independently measured.