Meze ANTONIO from Romania may be unfamiliar to many fans in China before the first half of 2020, or just stay at the stage that has been heard. Since the second half of 2020, a formal agent in mainland China introduced the brand with a unique eye. Through active exposure and offline audition opportunities, Meze has gradually entered the field of vision of more headset players.
A brief review of the brand’s not-too-long history, the founder Mr. Antonio Meze founded Meze in Romania in 2011. It is reported that, like many audio brand designers, the origin was also because the choices on the market at that time failed to satisfy their own music Reduction requirements. As an experienced product designer, Mr. Antonio Meze's team members are also engineers, musicians and artists.
Meze ANTONIO brand launched the first earphone product series 99 Classics in 2015. The unique shape and overseas media reports attracted the attention of San Er Jun at that time.
In 2018, Saner Jun went to the Munich Hi-End exhibition in Germany to report. It was the first time I saw Meze on display. The few products at that time left Saner Jun deeply enough impression.
That exhibition was also the first appearance of MEZE's new flagship flat earphones-EMPYREAN, maintaining MEZE's lightweight wear and unique tuning style. At that time, San Erjun also noticed that many audio source/amp brand displays in the venue also chose to pair with EMPYREAN flat-panel headphones, which shows that it has gained sufficient recognition in the industry and the European market in a short period of time.
A few months ago, the flagship flat earphone EMPYREAN of the Meze brand came to Sanear Studio. After a series of warm-ups and matching, I can finally share with you San Erjun's experience of playing with this headset.
Breakthrough of the latecomer
As a high-end headset that is advertised as being driven by portable equipment, MEZE equips Empyrean with a customized aluminum compression safe for users to take away.
Two pairs of ear pads of different materials are officially equipped as standard, which are made of leather and Alcantara. In terms of wearing, leather is more suitable for summer, and Alcantara is more suitable for winter.
With carbon fiber as the head beam and aluminum alloy as the frame, plus a large area of "steal", EMPYREAN has successfully maintained the tradition of wearing the MEZE headset with light weight, 430 grams, and full ear cover Among the flat-panel earphones is the lighter one.
Light weight is just one of the indicators for wearing comfort. Through the 360° freely adjustable cavity shaft and oval-shaped filling, the inert ear cushions are just right, plus the leather headband with elastic fibers. The ingenious design of EMPYREAN allows the weight pressure to be evenly distributed on the head, which is conducive to long-term listening, and can even be used when going out.
EMPYREAN is officially available in copper and black mask colors, and San Erjun is a more calm and low-key black version. The CNC hollowed out aluminum grille can not only maintain the transparency of the sound, but also its exquisiteness can be called a handicraft, provided that you have no intensive phobia.
Friends who are interested may wish to take a look at the shell CNC process officially announced by Meze above, and feel distressed about these cutter heads.
Open the ear cushions,We can peek into the core of Empyrean, the ISODYNAMIC (isomagnetic) hybrid array frame flat unit.
MEZE calls Empyrean's unit technology "ISODYNAMIC", and the full name of the unit is Isodynamic Hybird Arry Driver MZ3. To be more rigorous, this is not only a unit form, but Sanerjun thinks this is a complete and innovative flat-panel headset architecture. This is the result of a joint collaboration between Meze and RINARO, an audio company specializing in planar magnetic technology funded by the Ukrainian state.
From the blasting image, we can see the unit frame made of glass fiber filled with ABS. In the middle is the ultra-lightweight (0.16g) produced by RINARO with an effective area of 4650mm². The membrane is the isomagnetic magnetic array of the hybrid array on both sides (somewhat similar to AUDEZE's Double Fluxor).
The MZ3 diaphragm in the middle of ISODYNAMIC is a unique design of RINARO. The upper fold-back voice coil is good at playing back low frequencies, and the lower spiral voice coil is good at mid-to-high frequencies with stronger directivity, and is more direct to the ear canal when worn. This coincides with the design and placement habits of speaker products. The high-frequency unit of the speaker also needs to be as direct as possible to the ear or even slightly closer, in exchange for a more level and more reasonable sound field and image, and a more reasonable energy perception.
According to the measurement of MEZE, the hybrid design of MZ3 diaphragm optimizes the direct sound transmission of the unit above 10kHz and reduces the deterioration of sound image clarity caused by sound diffraction. If you read it right, the official nominal frequency response range is 4-110000Hz.
The patented ISOMAGNETIC and other magnetic ear pads are not only comfortable design, but also reduce the stray magnetic field of the listener's head through the unique design, and also use the magnet plate to guide the magnetic field back to the unit to improve Unit efficiency,The magnet plate is also used to fix the ear pads to facilitate replacement of the ear pads.
The patented isomagnetic magnetic array plate under the ear pads can also retract the magnetic field into the unit. The official measurement can increase the work efficiency by 1dB (12%) and make 95% of the stray magnetic field deviate from the head.
From the shape of the unit and coil, coupled with the unique design of the cavity and ear pads, MEZE achieves a sufficiently high effective usable area in a not huge headphone volume, and achieves lightweight and high fit Degree of wearing advantage.
Another unique sound in flat-panel headphones
From the design ideas of MEZE, it is not difficult to see that "high efficiency" is an important requirement of the MEZE and RINARO teams. According to the book data, the impedance of 31.6Ω and the sensitivity of 100dB are definitely a low-threshold category among flat-panel headphones. Fortunately, after experiencing Beyer's new T1 and the lower impedance AUDEZE LCD-4z flat-panel earphones, San Erjun was not easily fooled. I have tried using San Erjun’s daily outing standard music chart small tail with Empyrean. If you only listen to pop music in Apple Music, then the overall energy is basically sufficient, and the tuning is also easy to listen to. However, anyone who has used a model with a larger output or a current-type output will know that the combination of a mobile phone/small tail is just a tempting sweetness.
Perhaps because the design of the unit is different from that of the traditional flat unit, Empyrean does not have a harsh requirement for the burning time. According to San'erjun’s observation, the difference between the sound of the earphones being turned on and after hundreds of hours of operation is not much different, and the sound of the ears is already in the state when the ears are put on out of the box, and there will be no obvious harshness and frizz. After the warm-up in the first couple of days made Empyrean become more melodious and relaxed, the overall state is basically stable.
Overall, Empyrean’s voice is impressive enough. This headset is not used by San Erjun alone in the studio. In the past few San Er music salons,It is one of the protagonists, especially when it is on the same scene with traditional flat earphones such as Audeze and HIFIMAN, its character is even more special.
In the traditional impression, in addition to the inherent characteristics of low distortion, high linearity, and high dynamics, most of the flat-panel headphones we are familiar with will look dense and heavy. The jargon says that they have the feeling of speakers, and some are pursuing sharpness and clarity. , The sense of quality is outstanding, but Empyrean is not a member of the traditional tablet impression. Whether it’s a fan, a mixer who came to audition or San Erjun himself, the evaluation of Empyrean is basically the same: this is a flagship headset that emphasizes HiFi more than absolute faithfulness, warm, delicate and vivid. The sound can please fans of different tastes.
Considering the convenience of interface and output thrust switching, San Erjun uses Shanling M30 as the representative of "portable" equipment with Empyrean. After many attempts, the output state is 2.5mm balanced output, high gain (the machine has the highest gain optional), and transistor output. Yes, it is more appropriate to use high gain.
Although the Empyrean mentioned above is not as faithful as the monitoring equipment, it does not affect its natural and neutral sound description. San Erjun prefers to use M30 with Emyrean to listen to vocal-themed records. With the M30 transistor model, Empyrean will not have an exaggerated vocal mouth shape with the information and power supply close to the desktop level, but has a moderate sense of image distance and detailed description. Listening to the recording studio vocal records will not appear cramped, while listening to the Live recording has a comfortable sense of positioning. Regardless of the form of vocal recording, the relationship between the timbre of the orchestrator and the vocals is handled in an orderly manner, and the singer's own voice The texture is therefore more real and smart.
In terms of the collocation of the desktop system, San Erjun mainly uses AURALiC G1 suit with AudioValve RKV MK3 tube amp and Xiangsheng P1 pure class A amp driver. Regardless of whether it is paired with a tube amplifier or a stone machine, Empyrean is good at showing warm and crystal texture, but different combinations can bring out the different potential of this headset, especially suitable for complex recordings.
The Xiangsheng P1 is a fairly low-key pure Class A preamp/amp all-in-one machine, but it appears to be a good match in several different attempts by San Erjun. Driven by ample current, Empyrean shows the ultra-high sound density and control that a top flat earphone should have. For recordings such as "Jazz Variations" and "Love Bi Jin Jian" of the Terror Strait, which are commonly used in playing test dynamics, the combination of P1 and Empyrean is more complementary. Those strong and weak big dynamic sections, protruding strong playing, almost bursting drum head, and the distortion effect of vigorous brushing, this combination can be retracted and played freely.
Change to RKV MK3, this classic OTL circuit amp is not known for being warm and bold. But as soon as this combination is turned on, the listener can be in a transparent, bright, colorful and rich atmosphere. RKV MK3 can show the Empyrean crystal and soft texture to the fullest, and it can have both toughness and strength when dynamic. The amount of detail that the high-end system should have has not been smeared because of the brilliant atmosphere, but the translucent details that enrich the emotion of the music. This is a completely different orientation from the quality and monitoring system that emphasizes the style of high analysis.
This time the introduction of Empyrean’s voice to San Er Jun did not specifically explain the different combinations and different records as in the past. Of course, there is a suspicion of being lazy, but more importantly, in San Er Jun’s view, Although Empyrean is not particularly easy to drive, it can show a fairly consistent musical performance with different sound sources to interpret different music. Whether it is paired with a high-quality portable or desktop gall/stone system, vocal recording or instrumental recording, Empyrean has a smooth, elegant and translucent playback, and there is no need to decompose and pick.
However, without this, Empyrean can almost be the near perfect flat earphone choice at this stage. Judging from recent play and comparison, Empyrean's spatial transparency and hierarchical imaging capabilities are outstanding among today's high-end headphones. This is undoubtedly due to the innovative design of the ISODYNAMIC flat panel unit. But in terms of the scale of the sound field that has not been mentioned above, and high-end audiophiles are quite concerned about, this headset is slightly eclipsed. Take the playback of Mahler's sixth symphony conducted by Teodor Currentzis in 2018 as an example.Empyrean's full control can cope with the turbulent dynamics of the Metal Horse Six, which is ridiculed by the industry, but the open space required for the track is slightly lacking, which limits the overall momentum. For the top-level positioning of flat-panel headphones, it has to be said that it is a pity that the sound field is not sufficiently open.
The text before the photo above is based on the original headset cable. Sanerjun, who was determined to explore the potential of Empyrean before the deadline, tried the official Furukawa oxygen-free copper upgrade cable in the picture. The wire base is Furukawa's PCUHD 4N oxygen-free copper, 140 cores, 8 strands of TPE sheath braided, and Jensen silver-containing solder soldering.
In comparison, the first thing to say is that the original earphone cable is not weak, and the original cable has a thicker listening experience, while this Furukawa copper-based upgrade cable is more condensed and bright, and has a line feel than the original The lines are more clear and prominent, and the distance of the sound field is opened to a certain extent. San'er Jun privately guessed that the official is also clear about the characteristics of Empyrean's sound (a certain degree of shortcomings), so the tuning of the upgrade line is also a corresponding design. In San'er Jun's view, this is worth the user to purchase for supplementary matching. .
A comprehensive high-end new selection
Observed from months of playing and three-ear gatherings, the emergence of Meze Empyrean has a great impact on the high-end earphone market and the flat earphone field. The domestic price of more than 20,000 yuan is not low, and there are many choices of similar prices or big names or Hi-End niche brands. However, Empyrean is not only unique enough in product appearance, ergonomics, and acoustic design tuning. It is suitable for most music genres and audiophiles of different tastes. In addition to the unsatisfactory size of the sound field for top-of-the-line headphones, the overall feeling of being able to easily indulge in music from the outside to the inside is considered rare in today's high-end market. I can't help but make people wonder, is this unique crystallization due to Empyrean's unique mixed-race life? You know that the design and manufacture of this headset are from the diverse Romanian Meze factory, and the acoustics are from the Ukrainian company Rinaro.
The sharing of MEZE Empyrean is here for the time being.Hope to have Empyrean fellows to share your match with San Erjun. Empyrean is really one of the best choices for the three ears who can listen to the head but not the earplugs, but can't stand the top head and neck. I look forward to hearing a more comprehensive Empyrean matching program~
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