Review: Unique Melody Multiverse Mentor

Sound impressions

I auditioned Mentor over a three-week period, using various familiar test tracks and new music. Once I settled on the most appealing combination of tips and sources (SpinFit CP100 and HiBy RS8), I took track-specific notes and compared it to other IEMs I had at hand. The following impressions are a summary of my findings, with some track notes used for context.

Tonality

I hear Mentor’s tonality as a mild U-shape, with boosted bass (mainly midbass), a smooth and relatively neutral midrange, and a lively, crisp treble. It has a warm, energetic presentation, but is not over-the-top excitable, so it’s generally not fatiguing for longer sessions. 

Bass is probably not the best place to start an otherwise positive review because it’s the least positive aspect of Mentor to my ears. Despite promising a more textured, deep and powerful bass response using specially-tuned and designed BA drivers in combination with BCD ‘secret sauce’, Mentor’s bass is unmistakably BA bass. 

That’s to say it has less impact, depth and weight than a properly tuned dynamic driver, with a faster decay that makes it sound less natural to me. Take a modern electronic pop track like Selena Gomez’s ‘Hands To Myself’, and while Mentor does a good job at ‘faux’ sub-bass, with some BCD-induced bounce and weight, the decay is too quick, so focus quickly shifts to the midrange and treble instead. 

Similarly on Ilan Bluestone’s ‘Scars’, the sub-bass kick is far quicker and tighter than it would be with a DD IEM, without any of the visceral weight of the latter. I can feel the BA texture of the bass, which works well for this track, so it’s not that there’s no place for this type of bass or tuning, but it’s just not my preference for the type of music I listen to. 

This makes Mentor sound more analytical with tracks like Dire Straits’ ‘Sultans of Swing’ and modern classical music like Max Richter’s ‘Whispers’, where bass notes that are usually full and resonant are less prominent and remove some of the emotional engagement I have with those tracks. The flipside of the coin is that if you prefer your bass to be subservient to the rest of the tuning, don’t like slow, weighty bass notes, or are easily fatigued by elevated dynamic driver bass, Mentor might well be a more appealing choice. 

Mentor’s midrange is where this IEM comes into its own, in my opinion. Vocals, both male and female, are well presented, resolving, and realistic, with a certain smoothness and refinement that makes them sound natural most of the time. Instrument timbre is good, though I prefer the sounds of strings, drums and piano with competent dynamic driver hybrids. 

Electronic music, to me, is Mentor’s strength. It recreates electronic notes as if they’re emanating from the IEM itself, which is to say they sound almost flawlessly clean. This has much to do with Mentor’s technical ability (more on that later), but it’s also where I feel Mentor’s midrange focus is at its sharpest. 

Mentor’s upper midrange in particular is not overly elevated, so torture tracks like Seven Lions’ ‘Island’ (featuring Nevve) are far less agonising – and even moderately pleasant at all but the loudest volume. Female vocals on more sedate tracks, like Lana Del Rey’s ‘Young and Beautiful’ and Billie Eilish’s ‘NDA’ are very detailed and really good. Instruments and electronic effects sound somewhat less convincing.  

Treble is where I have some qualitative issues with Mentor, but only on certain tracks that highlight Mentor’s mid-treble emphasis. On the whole I find Mentor’s treble very detailed, sparkly and resolving, aided by its inimitable technical ability to image nuanced high-frequency sounds with absolute precision.

On Bon Jovi’s anthemic ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’, microdetails are easier to hear with Mentor, and the tambourine in the left channel intro is rich and detailed. The added resolution in the string sections of The Shins’ ‘New Slang’ is immediately apparent, but they come off sounding a bit plastic too. In contrast, the air and sparkle in Ilan Bluestone’s ‘Will We Remain’ is intoxicating at times, as it is with many different songs of its ilk. 

Mentor’s ability to dig out the smallest details and place them on a pinhead on the stage is probably the best I’ve heard, and much of that comes down to its treble quality. That said, it can get peaky at times (Island, anyone), and I hear some sibilance with certain artists, male and female, including The Weeknd (in Lana Del Rey’s ‘Lust For Life’), and Rosie Thomas (in most tracks on her brilliant ‘These Friends of Mine’ LP). I also feel some of the mid-to-upper treble energy is what makes some female vocals sound drier than I’d like. 

Overall, Mentor’s tonal balance is its greatest strength – and also, for some, it’s weakness. There’s not one element that calls itself out over everything else, and the tuning is such that most music sounds ‘correct’. Even the bass works well within the overall tuning gestalt, and there are many happy Mentor owners that love it for this reason, my personal reservations aside.  

Technicalities

For me, Mentor’s value is not so much in its agreeable tonality, but rather its technical excellence. It is the poster child for modern day technical IEMs. 

I’d say Mentor is across-the-board technically excellent in every technical metric: resolution in particular, but also imaging, separation, staging, speed, dynamic contrast and layering. It’s not outright the best in every metric (other than resolution, imaging and separation), but it’s right up there with the very best and doesn’t dip below excellent in anything.

This, to me, is what makes Mentor such a good fit for electronic music. It presents digitally-created music with the ultimate precision, speed, focus, contrast and, most importantly, imaging acuity. 

The incisiveness and separation of the various layers in Armin van Buuren’s ‘Intense’, for example, is mesmerising to hear with Mentor, even though tonally it’s not the best I’ve heard at replicating some of the bass drops and violin strings in this track. And while it lacks the deepest bass impact, play any track in Ilan Bluestone’s catalogue and that doesn’t really matter, because technically Mentor transports you to a vivid, digital world that’s borderline hypnotic.  

Another of Mentor’s technical strengths is how effortlessly it resolves fast, complex music. Listen to Daft Punk’s ‘Contact’ and the blinding array of effects and instruments never smear over each other for a millisecond, even in the busiest part of that track. Switching to Max Richter’s rendition of Vivaldi’s ‘Winter 1’ and the large orchestral swathe of the different string sections are easily split apart and rendered in pristine detail. 

Mentor’s technical ability doesn’t come off as overly analytical, even though I’d class it as more analytical than musical. It’s less organic and romantic than Traillii, for example, but also more technical and energetic, the latter being Traillii’s Achille’s Heel for some. As a well-tuned monitor with top-tier technicalities, I’d say Mentor has few equals among the IEMs I’ve personally experienced, even though it’s not the most engaging monitor I’ve used.

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