Meze 99 Classics Walnut Gold Headphones (Gold & Black)

Product Information

But perhaps, most pertinent to this review, Meze have provided us with a great, natural, organic sound that demonstrates how linearity is just as impressive as neutrality.

The Meze 99 Classics posses a midrange that is musical, rich, transparent, and as a result supremely engaging and the DragonFly Cobalt is an apt partner in that rendering. SOUND quality is another time night and day, or let’s say, cold dry night with agressive neon street lamp and colourfull sunny day with fresh air from the Meze ocean. However, the bass ensures that the finest blade is not unpacked in the separation, as it sometimes acts a bit growly. With hardware of cast zinc alloy with electroplated coating, Meze 99 Neo is a classic for every day.With warm surroundings the pads gets warm very quickly and you can literally feel the warmness in your ears.

Even after wearing for long listening periods they is no sense of discomfort until you use them in a colder environment. Passionate I am of all things audio and I seek to sing its praises to the world, via the AudioKeyReviews. And most important of all, the Meze 99 Classics will perform its magic with smartphones, computers, DAC-dongles, DAC/Amps, DAPs, etc. Listening to my usual treble test songs, Radiohead’s “Creep”, “Paranoid Android” and “No Surprises” and Elton John’s “Rocket Man”, and the 99 Neo’s produced one of the better performances among my portable headphone collection.The bass have great body and weight even if it slighlty decay on mids on bass heavy tracks, mid bass being pumped up and ultra energic giving an exciting turn to acoustic drum used in jazz or rock, mids being lively with impressive presence and timbre that can deal so well with vocal, piano or violin, and treble having just enough extension to give you the details you need without the harshness or peaks that can make long listening fatiguing : Neo is a rebel maestro that know how to read a partition and give it all layers it need but with an expressive twist that will sure polarize audiophile. Our aim is to change the perception of headphones as technical devices or as cheap plastic accessories and create a mature product to fall in love with. Those who like their bass fat but not overbearing will be pleased with the Mezes’ low-frequency handling.

That being said, the thick, plush earpads disperse the pressure and clamp force is quite even throughout its range so they won’t clamp too hard on those with larger head sizes. The wooden components are carefully inspected and no flaws are permitted to reach the final assembly. Speed in the low end is good for such a big driver, and distortion is almost negligible in this frequency; it remains composed even on challenging and complicated compositions.Both are excellent-sounding headphones in their own right, and I would say that only slightly do the Classics have the edge in terms of refinement. At the initial part of the track the guitar sounds sweet and the background instruments are separated out clearly.