Meze Audio Liric 2nd Generation

It’s been two years since Meze Audio launched its midrange planar magnetic closed-back over-ear Liric headphones – although given they cost £1,799 at launch, the term ‘midrange’ is most certainly relative. It was a capable and enjoyable design, and found favour with any number of critics from any number of countries. But Meze Audio has never been a company capable of leaving well enough alone – and so here’s Liric 2nd Generation.

It may not be the most inventive model name you’ve ever heard, but it seems apparent to me that the Romanian outfit has concentrated most of its efforts on the engineering and design of the product, and next-to-none on the marketing chat. 

On the outside, it is – broadly speaking – evolution far more than revolution. These are relatively wide, relatively heavy headphones, and they feature magnetically attached earpads that are so generously padded they contribute to that width quite significantly. A fairly elaborately shaped aluminium yoke arrangement culminates in a not-at-all-elaborate friction-pole technology that constitutes the headband adjustment mechanism. The headband itself is quite wide and quite thin, and is covered with leather on the outside – the inside is fabric-covered and is nothing like as lavishly padded as the earpads. Which is, on balance, probably a good thing. The outside of each earcup is now made of striped ebony wood rather than covered in the leather of the original Liric. 

Going inside

Inside the earcups, Meze Audio has deployed a variation on the Rinaro-sourced MZ4 Isodynamic Hybrid Array planar magnetic driver arrangement first encountered as part of the first Liric model. It’s ovoid in shape (63mm x 92mm) and, mostly as a consequence of its fibreglass-reinforced polymer casing, weighs in at 71g. The actual diaphragm itself, though, is a trifling 0.08g despite having an active area of over 3500mm².

The diaphragm features a dual-coil arrangement, with a switchback coil on its upper portion and a spiral coil towards the bottom. The switchback coil looks after low-frequency information, while the spiral coil (which is positioned in order to fire more-or-less directly at the wearer’s ear canal) takes care of midrange and above. The location of the spiral coil is intended to overcome the tendency for sound to become diffused and rather vague if soundwaves are shorter than the physical depth of the earpad from behind which they originate. 

For Liric 2nd Generation, Meze Audio has developed what it calls the ‘Quarter Wavelength Resonator Mask’. This is, essentially, a metal plate that strategically covers some of the openings in the driver frame – the idea is that QWRM effectively attenuates high-frequency peaks for a smoother and less fatiguing listening experience.

This driver arrangement, suggests Meze Audio, can deliver frequency response of 4Hz – 92kHz. Both of these are frankly unlikely numbers, but they do at least give some indication of the company’s ambition and intentions for this new model. 

The Liric 2nd Generation is supplied with a necessarily large travel case that’s likely to constitute a large part of your baggage allowance if you do decide to travel anywhere with your headphones. There are a couple of cables inside the EVA case in a relatively little pouch. One is a 1.3mm length of braided Furukawak PCUHD (pure copper ultra-high drawability) with a 4.4mm Pentacon termination – it’s hand-braided in Romania, and features 140 conductors, each with a diameter of just 0.04mm. The other is a 3m length of soft TPE (thermoplastic elastomer) with a 3.5mm termination. Each cable splits in two at the headphone end, as each earcup needs to be wired, and terminates in a couple of the usual ‘click-to-fit’ 3.5mm jacks. 

There’s a 3.5mm / 6.3mm adapter in there too, and – in a profoundly optimistic move in the context of the size and price of these headphones – an aeroplane adapter too.

Getting connected

For the purposes of the test, the Meze Audio are connected to an Astell & Kern SP3000T via their Furukawa cable and to a Naim Uniti Star using their longer TPE cable. The digital audio player is loaded with content of various file-types and sizes, while the Naim is used to access a Cambridge Audio Alva TT2 turntable, a Rega Apollo CD player and both Qobuz and Tidal streaming services. 

And while it’s unlikely to come as a shock to find the Liric 2nd generation prefer a nice big digital file to a compressed alternative, and clean, heavyweight vinyl to a wafer-thin charity-shop alternative, what’s obvious from the get-go is that these headphones aren’t all that judgemental. Some designs will ruthlessly expose a 320kbps MP3 file and hold it (and, by extension, you) up for ridicule – but the Meze Audio will simply try to make the best of it.

But you didn’t spend the thick end of two grand in order to listen to Spotify’s free tier, did you? 

With a 24bit/96kHz FLAC file of Chick Corea’s Return to Forever [ECM] incoming via the digital audio player, the mastery of tonality and frequency response of the Liric 2nd Generation is obvious. The claims for a 4Hz – 92kHz frequency response are bold – but there’s no denying the Meze Audio delve very deep and reach very high. At the bottom of the frequency range there’s solidity and rapidity in equal measure, straight-edged entry into the leading edge of bass sounds and, as a consequence, sure-footed rhythmic expression. Stanley Clarke’s elastic electric bass-playing enjoys speed and variation, and it offers a completely solid foundation for the rest of the frequency information to ride on.

Brilliant substance

At the opposite end, the Meze Audio offer brilliance and substance in pretty much equal measure – there’s bite and shine to treble sounds, but they’re robust enough to avoid any hardness or splashiness. And that’s true even if you decide to explore the outer edges of your source player’s output (incidentally, the Liric 2nd Generation are more than happy to play very loud indeed if you like, and without altering their sonic characteristics in the slightest as they do so). In between, the midrange is absolutely alive with detail both broad and fine – the insight into a vocalist’s technique, motivations, emotional state, attitude, character and all the rest of it is profound.  

The entire frequency range hangs together seamlessly, with the Meze Audio unwilling to prioritise or underplay any particular aspect of it. Tonally, they’re really nicely balanced – in the final analysis there’s probably just a hint of warmth preventing them from being absolutely neutral – but the circumstances in which this is problematic never revealed themselves during the course of my test. And it was a longer-than-strictly-necessary test, too, simply because the Liric 2nd Generation are a compelling listen.

The soundstage the headphones create when playing a vinyl copy of Mogwai’s Come On Die Young [Chemikal Underground] is big from left-to-right and front-to-back, it’s organised and controlled with absolute authority, and the spaces between individual strands are rigorously observed. Despite their fearsome powers of separation and focus, though, the Liric 2nd Generation never present recordings as a collection of individual occurrences but rather as a complete and unified whole. There’s a tangible sense of togetherness, of performance, to the way the Meze Audio describe recordings, whether they’re small-scale or large.

Considerable headroom

The same album allows the headphones to showcase their dynamic headroom – which is considerable. Mogwai always revel in that ‘quiet/loud/REALLY BLOODY LOUD’ dynamic, and in the Meze Audio’s hands the distance between these three states are significant. There’s absolutely no suggestion of stress to the way the Liric 2nd Generation describe these variations, either – they simply track changes in volume and intensity, and let you have an eloquent and explicit account. 

If there downsides, then none of them have anything to do with the way these headphones sound. By anyone’s standards they’re quite expensive, no two ways about it – and Meze Audio’s assertion that they’re ‘portable’ is, I think it’s fair to say, a false alarm. Not only are they (and the case they travel in) too large to be practical, who wants their lovely striped ebony wood finish to be jeopardised by, you know, Other People? Anything could happen to your headphones if you leave the house with them. No, far better to invest in a more modestly priced pair of wireless headphones for outdoor use and leave your Meze Audio Liric 2nd Generation to get on with the serious business of providing all the indoor entertainment you might conceivably ever need.

Technical specifications

• Type: Circumaural; closed-back; over-ear
• Drivers: MZ4 Isodynamic Hybrid Array
• Frequency response: 4Hz – 92kHz
• Impedance: 61 Ohms
• Sensitivity: 100 dB SPL @ 1 kHz, 1 V
• Distortion: <0.15% @ 1 kHz, 1 V
• Accessories: Case: hard EVA pouch with velvet lining; cables (1 x 1.3m braided Furukawa PCUHD copper with 4.4mm termination, 1 x 3m soft TPE with 3.5mm termination); airplane adapter; 6.3mm adapter; cable pouch
• Weight: 427g (without cables)
• Price: £1,850, $2,000, €2,000

Manufacturer

Meze Audio

www.mezeaudio.com 

UK distributor

SCV Distribution

www.scvdistribution.co.uk

+44 (0)330 122 2500

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