Closer Examination

The monitors look a bit more bulky than most in-ear-monitors due to the fact that they become wider the near the ear conductor section. As you might have noticed these in ears are meant to have the cord run over the ear and then down along side your neck. This surprised me a bit, but it makes good sense because of the way the monitor's case is designed. Another noteworthy design feature is the fact that you can replace the cord. This is really neat because the cord is one of the things that easily break because it is easy to hook your cord when you are, i.e. closing a zipper.


The protective case looks quite stylish and will undoubtedly shield your earphones from being damaged. The carrying case has only one major fault and that is the lack of a winding kit, this would have made it much easier to use. Because it doesn't have a kit you need to roll up the cord in your hands and then stuff it in the case. A winding kit would certainly have been a good idea both from an ease of use point of view, but also in the sense that it would stop the monitors from bouncing around inside the case.


The cord and connector that is used in the Super.fi 3 Studio kit is well designed. The connector is a 90 degrees bend design that makes it perfect for use with portable audio players. To my surprise the cord used was actually quite thick and with a very durable soft rubber coating. The cable itself is a standard balanced Y-split cable with an adjuster that lets you decide how long the split will be. Because the cable is so thick and with soft rubber isolation this will keep microphonic noise at a minimum which is nice if you want to use these headphones on the move.


Getting the perfect seal between your ears and the monitors shouldn't be that much of a problem with the Ultimate Ears Super.fi 3 Studios because they deliver a total of five different tips in various forms and sizes. In the box we find three single flange tips in small, medium, and large variants. Besides these tips you also get a medium sized double flange tip and a foam insert. Even though I have a quite large head I found that the small single flange tip suited me the best. To begin with the only tip I could get to fit and feel comfortable with was the foam inserts, but after a little fiddling around with the small rubber ones I got the all important perfect seal.

The difference between a good seal and a bad is easily noticeable. When the seal is bad the bass response and noise attenuation properties of the earphones will suffer greatly. Besides that the sound of the monitors tends to be "hollow" when the seal is bad because the monitor isn't balanced for use outside a closed space. Once you find the tips that suit you the best you are ready to reap the full potential of your in-ear-monitors. I spent about half an hour just going through all of the tips because I wanted to find the most comfortable one that delivered the best seal. I can definitely recommend any one with in ears to do the same since sometimes the most obvious choice isn't the best.


Above you can see the difference between the three different types of tips. The foam tips look really large compared to the others, but that is just because they are fully expanded. Before inserting them into your ear you compress them and let them decompress as you insert them into your ear. This means that the seal will be custom molded to your ear. The only downside is that the foam doesn’t muffle outside noise as well as the rubber. Of course there are exceptions if you can't get a good fit with the rubber ones using the foam ones will increase the isolating capabilities of the seal.


On the pictures above you can see how the monitor looks with a medium sized single flange tip installed on it. I found that the small single flange tip suited my type of ear the best.


Since the monitors are mounted with the cord going over the ear the cord has some extra material near the earphone which is easy to shape so that the curve fits your ear.


In order to reduce unwanted microphonic noise from the cord it's recommended that you run the cord behind your head and then use the split length adjuster to trim away unnecessary cable. This method should reduce the amount of cable noise being transmitted to the ear piece further improving fidelity.