First Listen: Ultimate Ears’ New Flagship Personal Reference Monitors (PRM)

Posted by: Chris Martens at 4:04 pm, May 31st, 2012

What I wound up doing was to tune my PRMs so that they achieved a sound reminiscent to that of the in-room sound of the most accurate and expressive high-end loudspeaker that I’ve yet had in my home; namely, the YG Acoustics Carmels. The neat part, though, is that the PRMs cost $1999.99, whereas (last time I checked) the Carmels sold for a cool $18,000/pair (which, sadly, is more than my household budget can handle). If a $2k/pair in-ear monitor seems a bit, well, crazy, then just consider this: it’s roughly 10X cheaper than some of the killer loudspeakers whose sound it can many ways emulate.

UE’s promise is that your PRM settings will be kept strictly confidential, so that they are known only to you, God, and to the UE technicians who do final testing and assembly on your PRMs. No one else needs to know what your response curves look like, or why you chose them. The only thing that matters is that you wind up with monitors that sound, for you, true to the music.

I’m looking forward to reviewing the PRMs in Playback, but until then I hope this blog gives a sense for why this product is so significant.

Happy Listening.