UE900

The first time I worked up the nerve to spend over 1000 on earphones, I bought the UE TF10. I figured I’d already picked up an F807 and decided to listen to FLAC, so I ought to pair it with something decent.

That TF10 stayed with me for a long, long time. I got to know its sound so well I couldn’t know it any better: strong instrument rendition, powerful resolution, rhythmic bass, and… vocals buried under the bass and instruments, plus a fit that was a struggle to jam in no matter what.

Two years later, one side of my TF10 finally developed a problem, so I had to let it go. It was a US-market unit, and there were no new TF10s on the market anymore… I could only switch to the ER4P, though sometimes I couldn’t help missing that aggressive TF10 sound. Compared to the ER4P it wasn’t transparent at all, but it was genuinely great for rock. Later I picked up a cheap TF10 unit on eBay, put it on, and just shook my head. That cheap, it was probably foreign e-waste. The resolution was there, but the sound was far too muffled…

So how does the TF10’s successor, the UE900, perform?

The UE900 basically eliminates some of the TF10’s weaknesses and inherits some of its strengths: the same surprising resolution, just-right instrument feel, much better vocals than the TF10, and a fit that’s no longer inhuman — far more comfortable than the TF10. But it also loses some of the TF10’s character: the bass rhythm is a bit loose, and the highs are a bit restrained.

If the TF10’s sound was a line that spikes at both ends and dips in the middle… the UE900 flattens it out.

What does that mean… it means the UE900 has no obvious character. The instrument feel might count as one, but who listens to instruments every day? It’s not a female-vocal specialist, not a pop tuning, not a bass-heavy thump-thump, and it has no transparency either. It’s mediocre in every respect.

So a lot of veteran audiophiles think this thing is a rip-off, because it has no character — like a random face on the street. It’s got a bit of everything but no strength, completely forgettable.

Another thing people blacken it for is the build. The shells were made transparent for looks, and through the transparency you can see a big blob of glue holding the internal wiring in place.

Actually the Audio-Technica iM03 is transparent too, but there’s no glue inside. Sure, I’ve always been anxious looking at that ridiculously thin cable, but in terms of swagger, Audio-Technica definitely wins.

Tuning with no strengths, eye-sore glue, and a price that was once 299 — the UE900 gets torn to shreds almost daily. But that doesn’t mean the thing is actually bad.

As I said before, the UE900’s performance is like flattening out the TF10’s spiked line… into a horizontal line. But even so, that horizontal line still sits noticeably higher than other lines.

The legendary true all-rounder IEM is probably exactly this kind of performance. This kind of IEM has one trait: for people who’ve been listening to low-end earphones for a long time, putting it on gives a clearly different feeling — my dad, for example…

After he put on the UE900 and listened to a few live tracks by Jacky Cheung, I had him put on the ER4P and listen to the same tracks, to decide which was better.

“This one (the UE900) is a bit better. That one (the ER4P) always feels like it’s missing something…”

So the phrase “broad but not refined” can sometimes also mean “all-round player.”

Not to mention the UE900’s accessories and packaging are genuinely generous: two cables, all sorts of fittings, a cleaning tool, and the benefit of Logitech’s strong warranty.

People always ask me what to buy when they want to get into high-end earphones for the first time, and when I ask what genres they listen to, they have no plan and just say all-round or ACG. (Here I really want to snark that ACG doesn’t represent a genre at all — ACG just means all-round.)

Then just buy the UE900. No character, but great value.