M-Audio IE-40

When the IE-40s crossed my desk, I pretty much fell out of my chair. Three drivers in a form factor just millimeters larger than its predecessor? If they weren’t sitting right in front of me, I’d have been skeptical, to say the least.

As in-ear buds go, the IE-40s verily drip bling. Unlike the other IE-series monitors, which have translucent casings, the IE-40s are silver and black, giving them a more luxurious look. They also have a detachable cable, which makes replacing a single monitor or the cable itself a breeze. In addition, there are a variety of adapters to ensure a snug fit for your ear canal. You’ll spend a bit of time playing Goldilocks until you get the right fit, but it’s worth it, since a proper fit will deliver up to 26dB of noise isolation from the outside world.

Also included are two adapters: a standard 1/8"-to-1/4" affair for compatibility with headphone jacks on mixers and other pro equipment, and an in-line attenuator/limiter. This is an excellent addition, since in-ear monitors can easily damage your hearing if you give in to the ever-present temptation to crank ’em up. Hats off to M-Audio for recognizing this and offering users some level of precaution.

Finally, there’s a cleaning probe for periodically scraping earwax (yuck) from the 40s. Don’t underestimate the value of this tool — a friend of mine had to replace a set of in-ear headphones because of his negligence in this type of maintenance.

How do the IE-40s sound? Well, it just so happens that I actually bought M-Audio’s previous top-end model — the IE-30s — after my last review, so I was able to do a lot of A/B comparison. Since I produce club and dance tracks, I started with a few mixes from my current DJ set. The first thing I noticed was the low end. These babies have wonderful bass, and not the boomy kind either. Compared to the IE-30s, which I have loved passionately for the past year, the 40s sounded bigger and noticeably warmer.

For more nuanced applications, I put on some classic Blue Note jazz recordings and kicked back on my couch. Not only were the performances vividly detailed, but I could practically hear the signal chain used in the recordings. Mids and highs are silky and transparent, just like the IE-30s, but a tiny bit smoother, resulting in less ear fatigue over long-term listening. The overall effect is that of listening to a great set of high-end monitor speakers, but inside your head. The IE-40s are so accurate that it was almost painful to listen to some downloaded music, such as MP3 files encoded at 128kbps — the compression artifacts on the tracks stand out like a shiny coat of digital slime.

The true test of any monitor speaker or headphone is how mixes translate from it to other listening systems. After several weeks of using the IE-40s, it became clear that these things sound so good that you have to be careful with your volumes. It’s far too easy to groove out to tracks while nudging the loudness to ever-greater heights. Accordingly, the mixes I worked on at sensible volumes sounded terrific on my studio monitors (M-Audio EX66s and Mackie HR-824s), and in my factory Toyota car stereo. That’s the mark of a solid monitor.

For field recording and professional mixing, the IE-40s are truly the state-of-the-art when it comes to in-ear monitors. If you’re serious about your audio and do a lot of mobile work, you need these ear buds, even at a list price of five hundred bucks. That said, DJs and casual listeners may be better served by M-Audio’s less expensive IE models, which deliver incredible bang for the buck.

SPECS

Professional in-ear headphones.

PROS
Three discrete drivers result in absolutely the best in-ear monitors I have ever heard.

CONS
On the pricey side.

$499
M-Audio, www.m-audio.com