The Walnut silver is the latest version to hit the market and the one I am reviewing right now. Right now Meze is offering two distinct types of wood for the cup, Walnut and Maple adorned with either an accented gold or silver finish on the external metals. When you look at everything dismantled in the picture below it is a surprisingly simple but effective build. Each component is user-replaceable, and when I say each one I mean every single bit of the headphone from the headband to the cups, drivers, sockets, you name it. They are comprised entirely of walnut wood, zinc, ABS, silicone, and spring steel and finished with pleather and memory foam. ![]() There is not a hint of crappy plastics on these cans as far as I can see and looking into their design information and this does seem to be confirmed. The level of involvement is very convincing, from the frequency charts to the build and R&D process these guys have really gone for the fully woody headphone experience that not only looks classy but also looks like a long-term investment. This sort of reminds me of the Grado approach but this time there is not a spec of glue in sight on the 99 Classics. ![]() More than that it is designed in such a way that practically every part is replaceable which apart from making DIY guys sit up and take notice also means the warranty on these cans is pretty rock solid. This time, the 99 Classics is designed entirely in-house. I knew the design and didn’t take up the option. I doubt Antonio will remember but we crossed paths before about 3-4 years ago when an email dropped into my inbox touting the 88 Classics which was the first time I heard of Meze. Meze is the surname of the main designer, Antonio Meze, who has been plugging away for a few years now to try and bring something worthy to the table in terms of quality headphones that people will buy into. The Meze 99 Classics is a $309 single dynamic 40mm driver woody enclosed supra-aural headphone built by a Romanian company, Meze. Of course, yours truly comes late to the game with regard to reviewing the 99 Classics which is a good thing because I am hoping to avoid the hype machine a little and talk about these in a ‘dust settled’ type environment and second Meze came out with a new Walnut silver edition just in time for me to get my hands on it so hey something new right? What Is The Pitch? Props to Meze’s hard work and their marketing team for involving just about the entire universe in talking about the Meze experience, I just hope they have enough headphones left to sell after all of this. He raves about most things like an uncontrolled energy drink but this is a headphone, not a camera. It is one of the most heavily promoted headphones I have seen in a while.Ĭhrist even Steve Huff is raving about them. It's tricky to do that without destroying the soundstage and air that makes the H6es what they are though.If you are into headphones I bet you have heard at least something about the Meze 99 Classics headphones. Much nicer, I think! Once I'm certain that the cutoff is in the right place, I'll start trying to incorporate the other tweaks I've tried (subtly smoothing peaks above 5kHz to lessen auditory fatigue dealing with the wiggle around 160Hz that makes barbershop quartet a little disappointing to listen to). I sort of eyeballed the cutoff by graphing biquad filters in octave (Matlab alternative). I listened to some music on my rockboxed Sansa clip zip with a -5dB high shelf filter with Q=0.7 and cutoff 700Hz (preliminary guess haven't decided if the cutoff needs tweaking yet) so that the flat part of the filter response begins at 1kHz. ![]() Rather than a 5dB recession centred around ~320Hz and weak bass, H6es have a rise from 320Hz to 1kHz that seems to be both adding colour and masking the (IMO pretty nice and definitely loud enough) bass. After messing around with a parametric EQ for months, I think I've figured out what's up. Seems like something about the frequency response makes these headphones curiously airy, but there was treble colouration that made vocals sound a little goofy (overbright). I've had my H6es (first gen) for about 9 months now. Tl dr I think first gen H6es sound better with a 700Hz q=0.7 -5dB high shelf filter One, has anyone compared the H6 to the meze classics 99?
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