Much of the activity in the in-ear monitor market has been at the budget end, but established German audio specialist beyerdynamic is not ignoring the growing musician market.
The company used the last NAMM Show to debut a new line of in-ear monitors, one of them specifically designed for drummers.
The DT 71 IE is designed to “deliver powerful bass and clear treble, enhancing low frequencies while ensuring detailed reproduction of cymbals, percussion and bass guitar overtones”, according to the launch publicity.
digitalDrummer tested the earbuds with a range of modules and VSTs on a MacBook Air via a PreSonus Studio26c interface.
What’s in the box
The stylish black packaging contains:
- a pair of in-ear monitors
- a pair of Comply memory foam ear tips
- five pairs of silicone ear tips
- one set of replacement wax guards
- a 3.5 mm to 6.5 mm jack adapter
- a compact hard case.
The design
The DT 71s are compact in-ear monitors supplied with a detachable 1.4 m MMCX cable. For e-drummers, the cable is woefully too short – and so you’ll either have to source a longer cable or use an extension audio lead.
Even though these are designated as professional musician in-ears, the cable ends in a right-angle 3.5 mm TRS jack. Again, this is a bit of a miss for e-drummers since ¼” is the standard headphone jack on drum modules. Yes, though the manufacturers do provide an adapter, I’d like to see a full-size jack as standard.
There are plenty of ear tips, but some drummers might find the selection quite limited. For example, there’s only one size of memory foam tip. And you don’t find any of my favourite tips – triple flange tips. So, again, you might have to look for an aftermarket set of tips to guarantee comfort and noise isolation.
Once you’ve chosen a suitable tip, fitting is easy thanks to the bendy over-ear hooks.
In action
Before getting in the performance of the in-ears, it’s worth explaining the technology inside.
At the heart of each DT 71 is beyerdynamic’s TESLA 1.1 dynamic driver system – named after famed electricity innovator Nikola Tesla, rather than the car line whose fortunes seem to be waning at the moment.
The system is built around an 11 mm dynamic one-way driver. The developers claim that the simplicity of the system is key to its success, stressing that it requires minimal components, ensuring consistent construction. I guess not having to worry about directing different signals to a bunch of drivers may have some benefits, but there’s also a risk that some frequencies may not be accurately projected.
To ensure accuracy, I stuck to what’s in the box for this review rather than replacing the tips with one of my preferred third-party offerings. I was not overly impressed with any of the supplied silicone tips, so opted for the Comply tips which needed to be slightly compacted before being inserted into my ears. They provided a reasonably comfortable fit and decent seal that silenced the noisy rims on my DWe kit.
I auditioned the kit on its own and also in a mix with backing tracks and was pretty impressed overall.
The stereo image was excellent. Because of the isolation and physical separation between left and right, the panning was accurate and gave a real feeling of three-dimensional sound – left, right and front.
The treble was bright and clear without verging on tingly. I certainly heard the ping of the ride and the full range of the hi-hats far more clearly than with many other in-ears in my arsenal – with the exception of my Nurabuds which are custom-tuned to my ageing hearing range.
The bass was rich and warm, but lacked a bit of punch, especially for the low end of the kick sounds and some of the more thumpy floor toms.
Beyerdynamic claims to have dialled back the mids to “add clarity and transparency”. That was possibly the case when listening to a full music mix, but when the backing tracks were muted, I did sense a thinness in the middle frequencies, which tended to impact on the snare and higher toms particularly. For some songs, I actually had to push those up in the mix to get a satisfactory response.
I was pleasantly surprised when I plugged the in-ears into some of our drum modules. Firstly, 16 Ohm impedance means that the 71s have tons of grunt when connected to the Headphone Out – with most of the Master Output dials needing to be dialled back to the halfway mark.
While the bass and treble were a bit tame for VSTs played through an audio interface (with neutral EQ), they were certainly ‘in your face’ on modules like the Roland TD-27, Yamaha DTX Pro and Alesis Strike. In fact, even the subdued mids were very much present on the modules – both for the onboard instruments (snare, mid toms, ride bell) and some of the chunkier hi-hat samples which were well balanced in the mix. This was also true of the mids in the backing tracks – there were no gaps in the sound stage.
Overall
Beyerdynamic has come a very long way since our 2011 review of the DTX 101 iE. Those sub-$100 in-ears were an early contender for the ‘bang for buck’ award, delivering “one hell of a wallop”. We liked their decent bass reproduction, good amount of mid-range and crisp treble – delivered with excellent separation and detail. We didn’t like the 1.4 m cable or the consumer-type, right-angled 3.5 mm stereo mini-jack – both of which remain virtually unchanged in the latest offering.
We were skeptical about the performance of the 11 mm one-way drivers in the new in-ears, especially as budget makers like KZ are now up to eight drivers in each of their KZ SA08 PRO buds which sell for less than half the price of the European offerings.
But after a few weeks of listening, we’re not sure that more is merrier. There was nothing lacking in the DT 71s, especially when they are driven by drum modules.
In short, plugged into almost any current drum brain, the DT 71 delivered thumping bass, crisp and clear treble, and solid mids in a perfect balance for drummers. And that applied both to the onboard drum sounds and any mixed-in backing tracks.
The in-ears are reasonably comfortable thanks to their compact design, but I found the tip offering fairly limited, and lacking in my favourite in-ear tip, the triple flange. This is far from a fatal flaw as the sizing is fairly standard and aftermarket tips are readily available and fairly cheap.
I was more disappointed by the cables which are clearly too short for the average e-drum set-up, not to mention the lack of a ¼” jack. Personally, I have been let down by a number of adapters over the years and tend not to trust anything but ‘pro-sized’ 1/4” TRS jacks. Again, because beyerdynamic uses a standard 3.5 mm three-pin MMCX connector, you can find decent aftermarket cables which are both long enough and have full-size jacks, but one shouldn’t have to fork out another $20 to $50 when the in-ears are meant to be designed for drummers.
The bottom line: despite a couple of easily-fixed niggles, the DT 71 IE is a solid alternative to some of the ‘industry standard’ IEMs such as the Shure SE 505 or the Westone Audio Pro X20.
It’s obviously difficult to select a single-driver model over the plethora of entry-level multi-driver offerings, but with beyerdynamic, you also get a two-year warranty and the assurance of quality from a company that has been making pro audio products since 1924.
Specifications
Transducer type: Dynamic
Driver: TESLA 1.1 11 mm dynamic one-way
Frequency response: 5 – 40,000 Hz
Nominal impedance: 16 Ohm
Nominal sound pressure level @1 mW / 500 Hz: 112 dB SPL
Nominal sound pressure level @1 V / 500 Hz: 130 dB SPL
Total harmonic distortion @500 Hz: 0.02%
Short term maximum input power: 137 dB SPL
Ambient noise attenuation: -39 dB
Weight (without cable): 6 g
Cable length: 1.4 m
Price: $499/€499
