Review Earsonics EM3-pro - early impressions and pics

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Earsonics already have established a great name with the SM2 professional earphone and the Earsonics SM3, but their EM3-pro, as their top-of-the-line custom monitor is another great product.

My Earsonics EM3Pro Flickr set can be seen here

Unlike many of their competitors who use acrylic shells, Earsonics shells are solid and the drivers deeply packed in the main body of the iem, not the stems. This has a couple of advantages: firstly, that the drivers shouldn't come loose with too much shaking; and secondly, that the unit itself should suffer fewer problems from crushed shells, especially as that pertains to the inner ear portion.

Jerry Harvey, Westone and UE customers should be pretty well used to the twisted cable which sits on two very tiny pins per side.

This unit has NO indication of which unit is left and which is right - frustration until you can play a track which calibrates which cable should go into which earphone.

Oh well.

The case is okay. It isn't indicative of the price of a custom monitor in any way. It is plastic and overall, cheap. While it serves better than the old JH13Pro box, it isn't by any means, impressive. The internal padding is nice of course, but I cannot shake the feeling that... for the money, a pelican case would be much better.

So how do these sound? Very good actually, and if I may use the term: laid back. They are not 'detail' freaks nor are they 'bass freaks', though they don't lack either. Neutral if a little lacklustre in the top end is probably a good way to describe them and probably great for guitarists and in general, sound engineers and musicians. I've not done frequency tests on them yet, but will do so when I get the chance.

Are they worth the price of admission? Yes. Do they deserve a better cable and box? Yes.

From what I understand, you can order them with a recessed cable jack for more secure trimming to the earphone base. Good on ya, Earsonics!

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Very nice pictures ! These ones are not bluish ;)

Just curious here : when you talk about frequency test, are doing test at each frequency range ? I've been looking for some info but couldn't find much yet.

No, these ones aren't blue, but I still need a good light. My tripod is useless now without its foot and my current lamp is incandescent, not flourescent, meaning I have to re apply light settings to photos and I'm just not able to fix them properly... gubble gubble gubble.

I have the equipment to compare earphones which I own and which should only be compared to earphones here at TMA for the express reason that my mic isn't top notch. But, ti will show measurable differences. However, I won't be getting to that for another couple of weeks for many reasons.

cheers for the comment mate!

Hmm Ok I see what you mean, thanks for explaining. It's a difficult thing to achieve for what I've read, many parameters to control, not even talking about the cost of the gear :p .

You're welcome for the comment ;) , nice pictures and a good brand to support. Only problem is the price, if not I would have maybe considered it as my actual gear. Insono and Earsonics are quite popular in France, especially the second one, and it's common to find good reviews on some pages over there, but only in french unfortunately.

For the light settings, been there, done that, wanted to crush some skulls ... And all that while I had a good friend coming to help with gear straight from Canon honsha ;) Just hang in there and it's gonna clear itself at some point.

I should be getting these back soon: they went to ES because there was a connection problem in the right ear piece. Evidently, the problem has been fixed in every run of production of the EM Pro series. I also had a fit adjustment done and will take pictures again to reflect the changes.

Well, these came back and they ROCK! they have one of the most if not the most neutral frequency responses I've heard in an earphone, professional or otherwise, but are quite dynamic and can be very fun. Quite sensitive though: at volume 0 of my Rockboxed Sansa Clip, music borders on too loud.

Saving grace: They don't hiss as much with hissy source components so they can be used with the Sony Walkmans without too much trouble. And EQ is really nice with them. Full review forthcoming.

TMA's review has been up for more than a week now: check it out.

EM3Pro in Review - Quite simply the best