This may sound like a big bag of hype, but what I am saying is the result of real observations of the UM Mage’s sound quality.

On my initial impression of the UM Mage, I wrote that the UM Mage has a tremendous soundstage performance. I compared it to the AKG K701 and found the Mage to be superior in soundstage depth and instrument separation. Both was driven out of the Grace m902 amplifier. Though the UM Mage’s soundstage impressed me me, I didn’t thought of going any further to see what the Mage was capable of. As I understand it, an IEM is to be used for portable use, so I was using it on the portable set up: a 120GB Ipod Classic with Lossless files and a TTVJ Slim portable amplifier. That combo in itself is really a killer, and the small TTVJ slim amplifier together with the Mage was already better than a lot of desktop set ups.

One night I got curious. The CEC TL51XZ and Balanced Beta22 set up is normally reserved for the biggest and baddest headphones like the Hifiman HE-5 and the Sennheiser HD800. What would happen if I plug the Mage into that set up? So I started taking out some Monster Cable RCA interconnects and hooked the Beta22 to the CECTL51XZ in single ended mode.

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