You have to plunge into the Ult Wear’s warm and bass-heavy presentation to find Sony’s intention with it and some tracks do sound much fuller and richer with the pulsating bottom end. So while keeping our fingers happily away from the ULT button, Eternal sounds fun. It never needed a bass boost but it does sound fuller and full-bodied with Chance the Rapper’s vocals dictating the rhythm. The Sony Ult Wear doesn’t inherently sound unpleasant for hip-hop tracks. Still, Kendrick Lamar wouldn’t have expected you to appreciate Die Hard for its bass over his lyrical apologies.
One glance over at the customer reviews on Amazon US and you’ll notice that there are a lot of happy owners of the Ult Wear. So there are people who’ll appreciate the extra energy and pounding bass pressure here. Don’t tell my audio nerd Deputy Editor this but I really enjoyed The Expert (Booka Shade Remix) by Yello. There’s energy, rhythm and straight-up banging bass which is an absolute menace for audiophiles.
But the Ult Wear lacks definition and sonic presentation even in songs that might need an extra punch from the bottom end. It colours the subtleties in Bnxn’s voice in Loose Emotions by brute forcing bass and bleeding the bottom end into the mids. The Ult Wear has the texture but there’s a lack of depth in the presentation. To put it simply, it sounds tedious and lacks dynamic range for non-bassy songs like Funny the Way It Is by Dave Matthews Band. If at all you find yourself pressing the dedicated ULT button on the left earcup, the song fills up with bloat and overbearing bass pressure. The Ult Wear doesn’t give you anything to appreciate the Time Bomb song’s soundstage from the same album. It’s baffling because Sony headphones are known to perform exceptionally well with all types of music. The WH series from Sony is been our top choice for all things music, but the Ult doesn’t bring that sound signature. It may suspiciously look like the WH-1000XM4, but it’s far from Sony’s award-winning headphones in terms of audio.