Meze Empyrean II Headphone Review - Worth $3000?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ค. 2024
- Thanks to Meze Audio for the loan of Empyrean II!
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Timestamps…
00:00 Intro, Pricing, Disclaimer
01:16 Shameless Self Promotion
01:47 I Talked to Meze
04:00 Setting Up The Review
05:47 My Takeaways
07:26 I'm Pro Meze
09:18 Test Gear
12:27 Sound
19:25 Comparisons w/ HE1000se & Tungsten DS
21:02 Comparison w/ LCD-2PF & Ananda Nano
23:48 I Don't Understand $3K, Here's Why
26:42 A Hypothesis...Under Pressure
30:30 Not Worth $3K
33:04 What Does Meze Have to Say?
35:09 Is It Solely a Preference Issue?
38:49 Is It A Frequency Response Problem?
45:10 Wrap Up
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If Meze are watching this video/ or by any chance seeing this comment. I just want to say a HUGE Well done to you for not being defensive and working together. Look Yes its a negative review, but as a product and headphone designer, this feedback is super valuable - And even dangerous to your competitors. IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITY OF THE NEXT MEZE EMPYREAN! It could be an icon. GREAT companies do as you have done, to not give up but to evolve and revolutionise sound. There is work to be done - Im excited for your future! ❤
To Wavetheory, Well done on having the guts to say this. Its not easy. But we can all see you LOVE this hobby and want do do the best for it and for MEZE.
❤
WaveTheory is quickly becoming the most transparent reviewer in the headphone community. Even DMS’s recent reviews have wildly inaccurate claims and are coming across shilling. I vastly appreciate Wave’s more scientific approach and his unbiased analysis is exactly what actual buyers are looking for when researching a product. This is especially important with one as expensive as this is. Very much appreciated and WaveTheory is an asset to this community. ❤
It's not shilling or wildly inaccurate. That is his preference.
Here is the thing, resolution is not the end all be all for everyone. Since that's the only objective thing he can actually point out. And many other reviers have noted, even Zeos who isn't a detail whore. They are not the final word in detail and I've NEVER seen anyone say that they are or that they even competed for that title.
They are good enough, and for those than just want an easy listen. Little bit less detail goes a long way for a fatigue free experience, along with other things of course.
There is the objective reality of a headphone. And there is the subjective preference if you like it or not.
DMS and others like it, wave theory is not a huge fan. I respect both just as much and you putting them down is uncalled for.
What about DMS's Omega headphone? Wave theory will review that too.
@@johnrus7661nobody has a problem with the DS Tungsten, meaning it's just a better headphone period. This headphone is already out dated for sound quality, and the price is too high. It's also ENTIRELY customizable, everything is able to be any color you want, the grilles are able to be swapped out for any design, material, or color you want, and eventually someone will make a portable dac that can run them. They are the future of wired open back headphones.
@@johnrus7661 DMS said in a recent video that the Susvara aren't really any more detailed than a K361. Yeah, he's off the deep end. Subjective hobby and blah blah blah, whatever, that statement is just objectively wrong.
100%
Thank you for another UNBIASED review, Doctor! 🎉
Nah, this is biased, hence why it's a valuable review.
Thank you for your unbiased review, we need more people like you in the headphone community.
I appreciate the depth of your inquiry here with this lovely headphone, and your honesty and disclosure through this process. thanks! you are never one to hop on a bandwagon when reviewing things
Love your reviews. Very logical and well-rounded approach.
This is by far my favorite review 👏 Your transparecy and honesty are incredible and in my opinion if you ever decide to do 4K fancy videos with beautiful brolls and background music you would literrally "destroy" the competition meaning the views and subs (that are already growing) skyrocket! As we all know there would be companies that would not be happy with your reviews and won't want to send you their stuff but who really cares when your are speaking the truth combined with your knowledge/experience/intelligence 👏
I for one much prefer this style of reviews and think the broll, lighting, music and editing of other channels are completely superfluous and frankly I am finding them to be distracting. This hands down no nonsense style is much preferable IMO
Watching it with my $400 ananda nano, and that's all I need and ❤️❤️❤️
That’s a great headphone 👍
I bought them and sold them in like 5 months. Your critiques are exactly how I felt, it like the utopia sound signature with 0 detail and similar staging prowess. It’s a really comfortable headphone though!
I love my Empy II. Good with just about everything, imho. I got mine around for around 2k, so totally worth it for me! Always good to hear other points of view though.
I got my HE1000se for far less than that amount, and I consider it vastly superior in sound quality (though not appearance, of course).
What price did you get it for and was it from a dealer ?
@@Smood472100. Got it on the classifieds over on headfi.
I'm dying to see your mm100 review, I ordered a DS tunsten in February and I really want the mm500 but it's quite expensive for a secondary headphone, although I want to actually use it for it's intended purpose.
Thank you for honest review! Tried these, was badly surprised and really felt they don't worth the hype. Aside the things already said, I found them rather slow and lacking deep sub bass.
Good on you for putting out your true opinion. I would suggest people still get their ears on them, to see if its worth it to you
Agreed. Mine is but one voice among many that are worthy of consideration and every end user needs to trust their own ears above everything else.
I was also initially underwhelmed with the Empyrean IIs. However, I found the best amp pairing to make them sound sublime is the PrimaLuna Evo 100; this pairing is magic.
Nice review.
You did a lot of explaining and painted a pretty good picture.
I personally adore the looks of every empy but I wouldnt buy any of them for more than 900$.
Though I had a mind changing experience on last years high end.
The empy (og) on a chord hugo tt2 with mscaler.
I owned that headphone for weeks untill I returned it for its lackluster performance.
Worse base and mids than lcdx and way worse resolution than Hd800...
The people at the chord booth were laughing tears of pride because I was asking them 3 times if this is really the empyrean!
They knew exactly whats going on and how their equipment was force feeding the empy!
Thanks for this one. Now I don't think I'm nuts for thinking the Modhouse Argon (T60RP in my case) sounds just as good as the original Empyrean. I'm still curious to try these. I did notice the original model fits and seals like no other headphone.
Now I really have to listen to them. I thought it would be a significant upgrade over the Arya Organic, which I love, but now I'm not so sure. Thank you for all of these detailed reviews
I don't think they are related, I found the Organic really bright.
@@chungang7037 yes, i know they are not the same in terms of eq. I was referring to the overall technical performance. He says that they fit in the 800 to 1000 usd range. I watched a lot of reviews about the emp ii and I was ready to blind buy them but after this review I am not so sure anymore. I definitely have to listen to them now 🙂
@@florinionut3398 Yup if possible you should also demo. Part of the hobby I have found is knowing which products fit my favorite genres.
Appreciate your honest review. Meze sounds like a great company in terms of quality communication and openness. Plus their physical design and quality is the best. I find it amusing how everyone is congratulating you on an unbiased review, but all reviews are biased. I think honest is a better word for these sorts of situations.
Another question. I am treble sensitive, I was looking at getting a Meze Elite. Is there a better alternative for something less expensive? LCD3? What's got some bass and dynamics/slam. Plays loud. Low distortion? Anything from HiFiman ring that bell?
I've noticed a similar trend where a negative review is often perceived as an unbiased one. I don't think that's helpful. I agree with you that using the term "honest" is more useful. I try to be as objective as I can be but everything I hear is going to be filtered through my tastes and my understanding of what sounds "correct."
Hmmm, if you're looking to spend Empy levels of money you may probably need to look at the whole signal chain to get what you want. That's going to require more than a comments section convo.
@@wavetheorysound Appreciate the response. I'll buy some of your time for recommendations.
Please review the ifi zen dac 3 if you can... The sound impressed me more than the SMSL DO400 despite having 10x less power
Kudos to Meze. You’ve earned my respect and possibly a purchase of your next iteration of these beautiful headphones.
How is the Empy II compared to LCD-X 2021, I recently redicovered the LCD-X, on most well recorded dynamic music HEKSE does a lot better, but on less dynamic range music the LCD-X beats even HEKSE, for example try 90's Iron Maiden albums, it provides the right punch and overall balanced and enjoyable soud just as you expect from Iron Maiden, with HEKSE its bit lifeless and unejoyable, so if you recall the LCD-X (not sure if you still have it) is it better than Empy II?
I'd take the LCD on sound easily. Empy is way more comfortable.
Wave Theory do you use power conditionners for your systems ? You never speak of that, wich seem to be very important. Clean ac current. What do you think of that and can you do a video of this ?
I have a Furman M-8x2 that I use for the more expensive gear, a clutch of Pangea power cables, and I've been transitioning over to using decent-but-not-crazy LPSs for the gear that they work with. Power is not something I've put as much time and effort into yet. I have a review of the PS Audio PowerPlant 3 though.
@@wavetheorysound Ok thank you, i saw the video. I'm curious about the ifi ac purifier. Juste a 100 bucks and active noise filtering. I will try two of these on my system
It looked like you had the headband adjusted for an excessively tight fit. That might explain why you experienced a pressure buildup in the ear cups.
Meze seems to put Comfort and Style as top priority and Sound is secondary.
If they had something close to say an HE1000 Stealth Sound Sig with the Meze Comfort and Style they'd have an all time Epic Headphone
That pressure build up happened to me with the Focal Clear OG and made them so uncomfortable to use that I had to sell them.
Need to hear these for myself i liked the empy 1 but they are super cheap now.
Regarding preferences, what genres are you usually listening to?
Most subgenres of rock & metal, large scale orchestral (symphonies and soundtracks, pipe organ), sprinkling of jazz, EDM, hip-hop
To be fair, the HE1000se is bright af.
There's a bit of a shelf to it, though not a major one. It's VERY revealing in the treble so if there is an issue in your signal chain above 3 KHz it will aggressively fire it down your ear canal.
@@wavetheorysound Agreed. HE1000se will reveal the "tricks" that a signal chain may be using, which is usually an over emphasis on treble. On a well balanced system, I don't find the headphones to be bright.
@@wavetheorysound nah bro, I have several dac and amps, they are shouty, there's no way around it. Only the WA7 tames those heights, go figure.
Unfortunately, there's no way you can take someone else's ears and listen through them, but Meze might be more right than you think.
Yes, different ear shapes /conditions take different tolerance. This is something every reviewer should keep in mind when reviewing.
It's really not especially on a tube amplifier
23:50 😳so a headphone 1/6th the price (Ananda) …..holy moly 😳
It's interesting, because the only hifiman I've ever liked was the Ananda/nano
With all Mezes the design and materials are at least a third of the price. It's a boutique brand still, kinda. Haven't heard this one yet, but the previous two were technically like an LCD-2 at best😅
GM ☕️from Toronto.
I went from Sen’s 650 to the latest LCDX (Creators Edition) ..and wow ( yes, it has its issues) …but it’s opened my mind as to what’s possible with a headphone.
The set of Emp’s 2.0 that Zeos had was incorrectly wired ( phase issue) …
As for me I tried the OG Emp’s and I was impressed..but not ( in Canada ) $4000 worth of impressed.
A Great and fair Review . 5:54
And for that amount of money you can (almost) buy BOTH versions of the Tungsten. 😳
I can imagine a flatter pads that would make these sound better.. maybe
Seen so much hype on these but I thought they seemed very overpriced, even the good reviews said they weren't very dettailed...not paying 3k for 'relaxed' unresolving sound.
Still loving my LCD-X 2021s. Interested in HE1000SE as they are on sale rn, and ZMF Atriums, as a compliment. Also the DCA E3s as I love good closed backs but they look ugly.
Also, I’ve been meaning to ask what your favorite headphones for metal are? Any insights are appreciated!
I get this question every now and then. I'm thinking it's time to just make a video about this topic...
This will be great, imho in general I have found dynamics to be better with metal genres, in planar LCD-X is excellent, HEKSE I found it depends, well recorded music it does great, but it's tuning is such that I find it not so great with older recordings especially low dynamic range music, I am dying to hear a Atrium or Utopia 2022, I think these will be top of the food chain for metal, will eagerly wait for WaveTheories take on it.
@@hiraksarma3068 Utopia 2022 is godly for metal. Atrium slightly more mixed bag - upper mids can be a bit grating on distorted guitars.
This review REALLY makes me curious about all these reviews that came out the day of release that praised it as THE best headphone or one of the best available….i understand diff tastes and how we hear things but kinda crazy I’d never hear these criticisms from almost every other reviewer…
maybe just maybe they get paid xD? same story with 109 everybody said its so good yet short time after that used marked is flooded with cheap 109
I have auditioned these headphones and I concur with Dr. Wave Theory. ✅
@@soulfulfool very likely but doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating haha
@@TheVeganVicar good to know, they were sooo hyped and now it’s starting to come out that maybe they aren’t that great!
@@False_Star, it’s simply a matter of personal preferences, but in my listening, they are not as accurate as the competition. I would rather have the HEDD 2 for far less money.
14:38 Recession in the vocals..hehe 😆..same on the LCDX …..
Super easy to eq out fwiw on LCD x
DEFINITELY not worth USD$3,000.
It would be far preferable to look for a used HiFiMan Susvara. 🎧
Thank you for your review, Mr. Theory!❤
I own the LCD-2, HE1000se and the Tungsten, and disliked the Empyrean and Liric when I auditioned them both.
Liric is headphones for traveling. For outdoors with dap. It’s different segment product.
I never use Liric2 indoors. For home listening Susvara, for traveling indoors listening HEkSE. But for traveling, walking, flying - Liric 2 and ie900.
@@goldenstasgs, in my particular case, there are far cheaper ear/headphones that I would use outside the house, including the amazing DITA Project M. ✅
It’s wonderful!😊 That’s because world of sound is so diverse.
Out of phase?
It's funny because the Meze Liric 1 I love for Electronic/House/Techno/Trance, but I hate for anything with actual instruments. Bad for rock.
I have the Liric and 109 pro. The 109 pro is great and I love how it sounds. But the Liric is sonically better with detail retrieval, instrument separation, and low end frequencies.
Your first bit is where Liric 1 loses me completely. If a piece of gear can't get reasonably close to sounding like the real thing, I'm out. I personally don't care if it sounds OK with synthetic sounds. If it doesn't sound right on vocals and acoustic stuff, it won't sound right on anything else. That's just me, though. Ymmv.
@@wavetheorysound for $2000 it should sound good with everything.
Man. It's very clear that you aren't enjoying saying these things haha. Thanks for the review
At this point I'm assuming that anything Meze releases is either 1) awfully tuned 2) not competitive 3) both. the ONLY meze product that I'd buy and still have is the 99 Classics, because I got it at a better price and while it sounds ridiculous, I love the wood finish they used, it doesn't need to have high resolution at that price and there is certain music that doesn't require those traits because it's not made for the wine sipping sophisticated classical music ejoyer.
Can your son give impressions as well. Seems like he might cut to the point😅
No headphone is worth 3k. They charge those prices cause people buy it. Do you think it really costs them twice as much to make this over something like the liric. No it doesnt. But we are also talking about the same community that buys oxygen free cables for 1k
Someone should rebuild an Edition XS for $1000 on top for materials and design to crush any Meze so far.
You just needed to put it on a Topping amp. 🤣
Oof...why are you assembling my nightmare chain? lol
Amir going to cry don't diss topping
Their comment about the treble amount = detail makes sense in a colloquial sense as a lot of people find that it's easier to sound detail. This is likely to consumer and bad product lacking extention. That said I've EQ'd the Empy 1 and Elite and it did essentially nothing to improve technical performance.
That said your phrasing about the speed of the driver being the difference is also wrong. Many mushy garbage headphones can produce sounds beyond audibility so the movement is not a limitation essentially ever.
Maybe? If the driver can't move, there is no sound. The only way to extract fine details is for the driver to move correctly in response to the tiny wiggles in the waveform that represent those fine details. Producing sounds beyond audibility I assume means sounds above 20KHz? That's fast motion for sure, but it's another thing to be able to accurately reproduce say 15khz (which would mean 15000 driver oscillations if the sound lasted for a full second) while the driver is also trying to reproduce tones with 60Hz fundamental, 440Hz fundamental, 1khz, and so on. It's a bit simplistic just to say ultrasonic response is sufficient for detail retrieval as well.
@@wavetheorysound I mean we can measure that it's doing both. Beyond the driver not holding shape and everything happening past it is the cause of problems. A very average driver on it's own can work perfectly well, but slap it in a chassis, add pads etc and likely (?) an HE1000 style driver turns into an Audivina. I had similar thought, but was it Oratory or who set me straight.
I really think a lot of reviewers have never heard a live cymbal hit in their lives (not you). That's the only explanation for why people avoid "brightness" and other resolving characteristics in headphones.
In fairness I think some people have an ear canal resonance in the cymbal frequency range that can make them quite uncomfortable. The other aspect is that excess brightness can get fatiguing whether such a hearing resonance exists or not.
Yet I think many audiophiles have never heard many acoustic instruments in person, because none of them sound as bright as many headphones make them out to be.
Thanks for the honest review. All the other reviewers are getting sold out.
Your opinion is entirely justified. Your credibility is at stake.👌👍
Technical ability has always been a weak point to Meze.
At least in the Empy/Elite lines for sure.
@wavetheorysound Yeah, most of the money is going towards the build, which I'm sure is very expensive to manufacture. If that's the most detail/technical performance they can get out of the Elite, it definitely is a limitation of those Rinaro drivers.
Idk the Elite is actually very, very resolving.
@marcustomlinson3582 My LCD 4 easily out resolves the Elite and that's an old headphone now.
I have the Empyrean 2. They’re pretty much the most enjoyable headphone I’ve ever heard. Every track I throw at it has a life that I rarely get to hear with other headphones. I’m sure there are more resolving headphones out there for the price (and possibly cheaper), but this pair of cans will help you enjoy your music without having to worry too much about the technical aspects. I’d say give them a demo with an open mind. They’re also quite the eye catcher
Wave Theory is a detail and resolution freak, his fav headphone is Hifiman he1000. You will not sway this man and you don't have to. Enjoy your empys mate!
@@massivemikeh yeah that sums it up
@@massivemikeh No.
It all comes down to.. do you listen to your gear or the music? question
Bro really takes twelve and a half minutes to start the review 😂
like I thought its overrated like 109
Its not but ok