Sony ULT Wear Clear Bass and ULT 1 & 2 Explained
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Sony ULT Wear on my miniDSP EARS.
The bass controls on the Sony ULT Wear look simple at first glance, but in practice they’re quite confusing. In the Sony Sound Connect app, you get a standard EQ, a Clear Bass slider, and the device itself has separate ULT button with two modes — yet none of this is clearly explained by Sony themselves.
To make things more confusing, the lowest band in Sony’s manual EQ only goes down to 400 Hz, which means you can’t directly EQ the bass frequencies that actually matter. So if you’ve ever wondered what Clear Bass and ULT are really doing, you’re not alone.
To answer that properly, I measured the ULT Wear using my miniDSP EARS, and the graphs below show exactly what’s happening.
Quick Summary
The short answer is the Clear Bass slider controls how much bass you get. The ULT 1 and 2 options are effectively preset shortcuts to control the Clear Bass faster.
The Problem With Sony’s Equalizer Design
Sony gives you a five-band EQ, but it starts at 400 Hz. That’s already well into the lower mids — not bass.
So:
You cannot individually control sub-bass vs mid-bass
You cannot see what Clear Bass or ULT are affecting
That makes the bass controls feel disconnected from the EQ, even though they’re doing the most audible changes.
What Clear Bass Actually Does
Clear Bass is a low-frequency volume control.
It raises or lowers everything below ~200 Hz
It slightly dips the 250–300 Hz region when turned up and slightly bumps it up when turned down
The rest of the frequency response stays essentially unchanged
This means:
Turning Clear Bass up makes the bass deeper and stronger
Turning it down reduces rumble if you think it’s too muddy
It does not change treble, mids, or overall tuning character
Clear Bass ranges from –10 to +10, and the curve keeps the same shape — it just moves up or down.
What the ULT Button Does (ULT 1 vs ULT 2)
The green graph completely overlaps the red.
Now for the confusing part.
Sony presents ULT 1 and ULT 2 as different bass modes. You even get different sound effects when switching between them — a smaller “particle burst” on ULT 1 and a more dramatic one on ULT 2.
But when you actually measure them, something interesting happens:
There is no inherent tuning difference between ULT 1 and ULT 2.
Measured at the same Clear Bass level:
ULT 1 and ULT 2 are identical
Same bass boost
Same curve
Same sound
So what’s changing?
The Real Difference Between ULT 1 and ULT 2
The difference isn’t the ULT modes themselves — it’s what they do to Clear Bass behind the scenes.
Here’s how it works:
ULT 1 sets Clear Bass to 0 by default.
ULT 2 takes whatever Clear Bass value ULT 1 is currently using and adds +10, capped at +10
Examples:
Clear Bass at 0 →
ULT 1 = 0
ULT 2 = +10
Clear Bass at –3 →
ULT 1 = –3
ULT 2 = +7
Clear Bass already at +10 →
ULT 1 = +10
ULT 2 = +10 (no difference)
That’s why ULT 2 feels stronger — it’s just pushing Clear Bass higher automatically.
Why ULT 1 and ULT 2 Can Sound the Same
If you manually match Clear Bass slider levels:
ULT 1 and ULT 2 become indistinguishable
Same bass depth
Same weight
Same frequency response
The ULT button isn’t adding a new bass profile — it’s acting like a preset jump on the Clear Bass slider.
The Simplest Way to Think About It
If Sony had explained this clearly, the system would make a lot more sense:
Clear Bass = how much bass you want
ULT = a shortcut to raise it faster
That’s it.
Everything else — the sound effects, the mode names, the separation from the EQ — just makes it harder to understand than it needs to be.
