Meze Audio Empyrean II

Meze Audio has established a pretty enviable reputation in the 13 years since its inception in Baia Mare, Romania. Its designs are well-regarded and competitive. However, Antonio Meze is not one for resting on his laurels. So, while nothing was overtly broken about 2018’s Empyrean headphones, his company has fixed them anyway.

£2,749 secures you a pair of Meze Audio Empyrean II. It’s a considerable sum, the fact that they’re far from Meze Audio’s most expensive headphones notwithstanding. Mitigation can be found because the Empyrean II has two pairs of earpads. The first, ‘duo’, is a blend of leather at the base and Alcantara everywhere else. These provide a ‘harmonious’ tonal balance.

The ‘angled’ alternative is fully Alcantara-covered, with a fine mesh over the grille. It supposedly offers a ‘detailed, airy and accurate listening experience’. Your choice comes with quite a selection of cables. Each earcup has an enclosure for a four-pin mini-XLR connection. Meze Audio offers a total of five cables (three of 1.3m length ending in either 2.5mm, 3.5mm or 4.4mm terminations, and two of 2.5m length terminated with either a 6.3mm jack or four-pin XLR). Each comes in a choice of two materials (copper or silver-plated). You can select one of these ten variants when placing your order.

Isoplanar

No matter which of the cables best suits your purposes, it will deliver analogue audio information to one of the more distinctive driver arrangements currently available in the whole of Headphone-Land. Meze Audio, not for the first time, has enlisted the help of Ukraine’s Rinaro Isodynamics, and the result is a refinement of the MZ3 ‘isodynamic hybrid array’ driver the company first created for the original Empyrean model.

At the back of the driver is a hybrid magnet array arranged to create uniform activation across the whole surface of the diaphragm. At the front, there’s a fibreglass-reinforced ABS frame. In between, there’s Rinaro’s ‘isoplanar’ diaphragm, which combines an active area of 4650 mm2 with an all-in weight of just 0.16g. This is made possible by Rinaro’s manufacturing process, which involves heating and stretching the isotropic polymer in transverse directions. So, despite the extraordinarily low mass, the driver is remarkably stiff and stable. 

Further evidence of Rinaro’s virtuosity comes from the diaphragm’s dual-coil arrangement. There’s a ‘switchback’ coil handling lower frequencies on its upper section, and beneath it, there’s a spiral coil. This spiral layout is more efficient at producing frequencies in the midrange and above, and it’s positioned to be more or less directly facing the listener’s ear canal. This layout is designed to allow soundwaves to enter the ear without time delays and overcome the tendency for the soundfield to become hazy when the soundwave length is shorter than the physical depth of the inside of the ear cushion. Meze Audio suggests this driver arrangement is suitable for a frankly disquieting frequency response of 8Hz – 110kHz.

Appropriately overwrought

And the Meze Audio Empyrean II wouldn’t be a Meze Audio product if all of this uncompromised and uncompromising engineering weren’t housed in some appropriately overwrought industrial design. The aluminium earcup frame is CMC-milled and assertively three-dimensional in its union with the sliding headband adjuster. The open-backed grille inside it is perforated with an Art Deco-inspired pattern that seems to bear no visual relation to the rest of this design or, indeed, to the broader Meze Audio design language.

Meze Audio supports the essential parts with a patent-pending system of ‘suspension wings’ outside a thin, wide leather headband. This layout maximises the contact point between the headband and the head while minimising apparent weight and pressure. 

The Meze Audio Empyrean II arrive in the sort of hefty, square and robustly fastening travel case you wouldn’t be surprised to see handcuffed to the wrist of a burly, short-haired man in a suit and sunglasses. Once they’re liberated from their confinement, it’s simply a question of attaching the cable you’ve selected, choosing which of the earpads better suit your purposes (they attach to the earcups using Rinaro’s ‘isomagnetic’ coupling technology, which enhances efficiency by using the demagnetising field generated by the driver to secure the earpads while simultaneously redirecting the magnetic field back into the driver), and connecting them to your source of music. From there, we’re in business.

Colibri collaboration

I used the 1.3m silver-plated cable with the 4.4mm balanced termination for my listening. It’s connected to an iFi iDSD Diablo v2 and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro loaded with Colibri software to facilitate playback of genuinely high-resolution audio files (FLAC and DSD, mostly). For some reason, the ‘duo’ earpads seem a little more comfortable on my head, so they’re the ones I attach. 

Lately, I’ve been impressed with the sound of the 2017 remaster of David Bowie’s Low [Parlophone] as a 24-bit/192kHz FLAC file, so it seems a good place to start. With all 5484kbps of Always Crashing in the Same Car playing, the Meze Audio is an eloquent, confident, and thrilling complete listen. 

In the first instance, the balance of the sound is most attention-grabbing. The Meze Audio Empyrean II are natural and unforced, seemingly effortlessly correct in their tonality and the poise of their frequency response. The top end is bright, substantial, and crammed with broad and delicate detail, and it’s a story similar to weight, substance, and control at the opposite end.

No matter how transient, minor, or deep in the mix a given detail of the recording might be, Meze Audio brings it out, gives it appropriate weighting, and places it in context. Their control over every area of the frequency range is such that rhythmic expression is unerring, tempo description is compelling, and the unity and togetherness of the performance—even though so many elements of this recording are treated and tinkered with—is vivid and persuasive. 

Midrange communication

The headphones’ midrange communication powers are even more impressive. Insight is total, and detail levels—it almost goes without saying—border on the excessive. There’s a brilliant balance between neutrality and intensity, and the articulacy of the vocal line not only makes the singer’s character, attitude, and technique plain but also makes the mechanics of the recording—the distance between performer and microphone, for instance—explicit. 

Best of all, though, the Meze Audio Empyrean II sound is not showy or flashy. It’s like its musicians serve the recording—and, by extension, the listener—rather than seeking to draw attention to themselves and their fluent musicality. They are here to entertain, not to smother the listener with self-conscious audiophilia. 

This impression only deepens with a pass through a 320kbps MP3 file of You! Me! Dancing! By Los Campesinos! [Wichita]. The drop-off in detail levels and overall resolution are only to be expected, of course. Still, Meze Audio maintains its ability to broadly and fully express dynamic variations. Their ability to describe a solidly organised, properly controlled soundstage is undimmed, too. The layout they generate is open, well-defined and three-dimensional – but not in an artificial, ‘spatial audio’ sort of way but simply in a manner that makes it simple to identify a specific strand of the recording from its position on the ‘left/right’ and ‘front/back’ axes relative to every other strand. 

Downside? What downside?

Honestly, there doesn’t seem to be much downside to Meze Audio Empyrean II ownership. They’re not going to suit the smaller-headed among us. Despite the clever nature of their hangar arrangement, there’s not a tremendous amount of adjustment available below ‘average-size cranium’. Those with a head of appropriate size will have to get used to (at best) quizzical looks from observers. These headphones are not what you’d call ‘discreet’. But serving up a complete, uncolored and thoroughly engaging rendition of your favourite tunes (via an equally talented source, of course) requires no accommodations or excuses. 

Technical specifications

• Type: Circumaural; open-back; over-ear
• Drivers: MZ3 Isodynamic Hybrid Array
• Frequency response: 8Hz – 110kHz
• Impedance: 32 Ohms
• Sensitivity: 105 dB SPL @ 1 kHz, 1 V
• Distortion: <0.05% @ 1 kHz, 1 V
• Accessories: Case: High-strength ABS plastic suitcase with foam inserts and leather handle; two sets of earpads (‘duo’ and angled Alcantara); cable (silver-plated or copper PCUHD; 2.5mm, 3.5mm, 4.4mm, 6.3mm or 4-pin XLR)
• Weight: 385g (without cables or earpads)
• Price: £2,749/$2,999

Manufacturer

Meze Audio

www.mezeaudio.com 

UK distributor

SCV Distribution

www.scvdistribution.co.uk

+44 (0)330 122 2500

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