Meze Elite Aluminum Headphones
Unboxing the Meze Elite Aluminum headphones while reading all of the design and technical information on their website felt more like I was going over the design brief for this year’s F1 engine package.
No other segment of the audio industry has advanced at the pace of the world’s finest headphone manufacturers. The level of materials selection, machining, and electronics expertise incorporated is beyond incredible, and these top Meze phones are as beautiful to look at as they are to listen to, but by all means go straight for one of your favorite tracks and you’ll be in love.
We’ll have a full review in issue 121, but between the two cables offered (silver and copper) and two different styles of ear cushions (Alcantara or a hybrid Alcantara and leather version) you’ve got four different ways to custom tune the final result. Thanks to their dual coil array, they sound like no other planar headphone. The level of sheer transparency and natural tonality might even have you re-thinking whether you even want speakers anymore. Bass is extended, defined and has just the right amount of damping and control to sound real. Everything from the mids on up to the highest highs is crystal clear, with a stereo image that feels more like your sitting about 10 feet from a pair of huge speakers, than that bowl-like feeling often accompanying the headphone experience.
Finally, the patent-pending suspension wings support system distributes the weight of the Elite phones so well, you can wear them all day with no discomfort. These are definitely one of, if not the most comfortable high-performance phones to come our way. After about an hour, be careful when you get up – it’s so easy to forget you have headphones on, I don’t want you to pull the cord!
There’s so much more we need to tell you about these exciting headphones, but if you just can’t wait – buy a pair. Right now. And be ready for an experience you might not have thought possible with a pair of headphones. (Though we must give some credit to our reference dCS LINA stack.)
A true triumph of technology and aestheticism.
$4,000