Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “There’s a reason it’s called a classic! – Meze Audio 99 Classics”.
You know there’s a lot of premium headphones out there that aren’t really made of what I think are premium materials. A lot of plastic. A lot of like you know, aluminum nothing special., But what makes these Meze’s headphones so G-dang cool to me is that they’re made of actual wood.. Let’S just look at that., Just just it’s so beautiful., It’s so nice. Romanian audio legends Meze have sponsored us today to talk about their 99 classics. And some of you in the headphone world. You might be thinking and you’re right.. These aren’t exactly new, but that isn’t a bad thing. Good, sound stays good for life., But Meze Audio has a pretty good reputation for making high quality headphones.. Their 99 classics sit far more in their mainstream line than some of their really really high end things like their Empyrean headphones, which I think can cost quite a pretty penny.. So these can be like a great introduction if you’re somebody who’s interested in getting into more of the hobbyist headphone space and want something that’s gon na look classy.
And also like quite a firm case.. You can really too much.. These are a traditional wired headphone.. There’S! No batteries.
There’s no wireless or Bluetooth connections.. So, if you’re looking for something, that’s, maybe a better commuter headphone. This might not be it, but they’re still actually quite compact, and you could totally take them in this carrying case.. But these aren’t, like super travel, focused despite their size..
Let’S talk about this mess. I’Ve made. In the box.
We get some stickers, a thank you from Antonio Meze himself.. Oh that’s neat.! So since this is actual wood, all of the patterns are gon na be unique.. So this is distinct to you, only. And in this little pouch here we have an optional cable.
You can buy from Meze with a 4.4 millimeter balanced connection., And then in here you have long cables. Too.. We have a three meter: braided cable that goes to a 3.5 millimeter jack.
And we have a shorter travel, focused cable that actually has an inline microphone and controller that does, as far as I know, play and pause.. Maybe a double click will skip., Maybe triple click. Will go back. One tap to play, pause or answer and hang up from a call.
Two taps to skip. Three taps to go back. I was right.. I kinda am partial to this. Really nice braided cable compared to the fabric ones, but I don’t have a balanced output with me. Today.
How’s, the memory on it And look at that. There’S like no cable memory., That’s a sign of a high quality cable is that even though it was wrapped up and shipped across the country like that, it’s basically a straight line: now., There’s no curls or curves in it., As you can see, with these cables, they Have a little bit more memory. Like see how that curls back up. That’ll come out, probably with wear usually.
Ow. Did I just burn myself on that Holy crap. Holy crap.? Also in that pouch, you got a quarter inch adapter and an airplane adapter..
These are becoming more and more rare. They’re collectibles now.. I kind of wonder why they give you two pouches..
I guess maybe this is a little bit nicer than taking this thing, but if you’re gon na be taking these things, then you’re gon na take this. So you might as well just fit this in here.. I don’t know.. Oh come on.
Meze. Burn-in is the process for exercising new audio equipment.. The main purpose of burn-in is to process is to loosen the diaphragm of a newly crafted headphone and to stress the headphone driver. Most audiophiles agree that sound quality will be noticeably improved after burn-in..
The 99 Classics require 40 hours of burn-in time to reach their optimal performing state., But I have some thoughts about burn-in. One. There is pretty much no evidence out there that suggests that burn-in is a noticeable effect or is required on pretty much any headphone. Two.
If it is required, why aren’t they doing that themselves before they send this off to me? Why wouldn’t they just blast these with audio for 40 hours and then send them to me Like? Why would they send me something that doesn’t sound good when I buy it? That would increase the odds of me being like I don’t like these. I’M going to return them. So just make them sound good.
When I get them., Don’t try to explain to me in your manual. Just admit: you’re, not an audiophile. Yeah, oh yeah, sorry yeah.! I guess I’m not well..
No, it means I’m not.. Most audiophiles agree that sound quality will be noticeably improved after burn-in. Yeah.
There’S that’s kind of a that’s kind of some fluff that I don’t really appreciate. And we should let people know that that’s not really a thing., But something I do like them, including is a frequency response graph.. Well, you have to take this with a grain of salt because it doesn’t actually say what this was measured on..
So it’s like you can’t really compare it to anything because you don’t know what they used.. They have dynamic, neodymium, slash, mylar 40 millimeter drivers.. The frequency response is 15 Hertz to 25 kilohertz.. The sensitivity is 103 dB at an impedance of 32 ohms, which means that you can expect these to be pretty easy to drive with anything laptop phone.
You should be set. Man. I love the feeling and the polish on these this walnut wood.. It’S really nice.
Meze also points out that all of the wood used for these are from trees at the end of their life cycle, which is neat. And replacement. Serviceability stands true for the rest of this thing.. We got only nuts and bolts in here., There’s no glue holding anything together, so you can fully take them. Apart..
The build quality is pretty solid.. The steel headband is like, despite its thinness, is very, very rigid., And maybe, if you really went for it, you could bend it, but I wouldn’t call these quite delicate.. The headband itself is made of polyurethane leather, so plastic leather.. It’S why these suspension type headbands that I find are really comfortable, though I do worry with the weight.. Oh, no, that’s! Okay! That’S pretty good.! What they’ve avoided they’ve avoided an issue that some headphones have.
Is that if they’re not heavy enough and their headband is a little too tight, they start to like pull up on your ears as you listen to them, and then you find that, like your headphones kind of pushing your lobes and no one wants their lobes pushed. Let’S be real., The ear cups are mounted on like a ball joint kind of thing.. You have a very small amount of swivel and tilt, and then height adjustment is done by the elastic headband. Noise. Isolation sounds pretty good. In terms of comfort.
These cups, I find, are deep enough for my ears.. If you have ears that stick out more, you might find that they’re not quite deep enough and you’re, hitting a pretty hard plastic kind of inner housing and enough space for most ears. They’re, pretty spacious, ear cups.
So I wouldn’t be too worried about that.. I think that these are actually really comfortable.. The tension on the band up here is at a really great level that, even if you kind of wiggle the ear cups don’t climb up.
They stay seated. They’re, not clamping too hard.. They feel very luxe.. Hey you guys, wan na, like talk to me right now.
Okay, the sound they’re, not the most isolating closed-back headphones. I’Ve heard. Like talk to me Andrew., I didn’t say I said, talk to me. Andrew.
Now you want to start something. Okay., Listen, guys, we’re all friends here, right, Well. Come on., I’m nice. No..
I guess now. The next thing to do is to take a listen.: It’s not that it’s a bad song. Cuz, I’m tired of it.. They aren’t wrong., It do get loud.. They are easy to drive.. I will say that when you get to the really loud volumes that you probably never will be or should be listening to, the sound gets a little compressed.
But again you really should never be playing these that loud.. You should now be listening to me on the microphone included with the 99 Classic by Meze Audio.. How does it sound? Can you hear my typing on my keyboard? Can you Can you Really it’s kind of more of a value add than it is supposed to be? Like a dedicated communication, microphone. Meze positions this as a fun headphone., And you know what They ain’t wrong..
They have a nice boost in the bass region that makes things kind of. You know thump a little bit more. And they’re, not like overly brittle or shrill. And they’re, not like overly sparkling or sibilant in the high end., Though I wouldn’t say that their treble is exactly perfect..
There’S some weird bumps up there, but you could either EQ that out easily or maybe it’s just an acquired taste that I don’t have.. Overall. I think these things sound, pretty okay. And if you know other reviewers who, like the Meze Sound Signature – and you agree with them on a lot of things – then go with them.. But that’s just me.. What does LABS say If we take a look at the frequency response graph provided by LABS? We can see that yes, there is indeed that bass bump that happens right around the 200 hertz region..
The nice part is that there’s this dip at 300 hertz that prevents the bass from becoming too muddy.. As I said, that makes kind of a boomy warmer sound. And if we go through the mids, things seem pretty chill with a little bit of a dip at one kilohertz. And then at the upper mids in three and a half.
Oh just south, of four kilohertz. There’S that big kind of treble dip, which I think is part of where I found that kind of weirdness in terms of presence., And then we jump up to a bit of an overemphasized area in the five kilohertz to nine kilohertz region, at least compared to our Target which could make things sound, maybe a little sibilant. – I didn’t find it to be too obnoxious for me..
Now. The important thing to note is just because something deviates from our target doesn’t mean that they sound bad.. Our target is meant to show what would sound good to maybe 65 % of the population..
That leaves a whole lot of people who might not be satisfied by a headphone that matches our target. Also like what a boring world we’d live in. If every headphone sounded the same., This would be boring to me..
They have passive noise isolation. That is pretty typical of any closed-back headphones.. You know bass noises they don’t get really canceled out. Bass, noises and things below like kind of the 1,000 kilohertz region. Don’T really get attenuated very much..
You usually need active noise cancellation to deal with those kinds of frequencies., It’s pretty par for the course. And the fact that these aren’t a super tight clamping, headphone or anything like that means that these are not the most isolating. But you know they’re closed-back., So you’re still gon na be able to block out a few things, especially once you put on some music.
And for the mic, the inline microphone, which it angles on the left side of the user’s head. Our lab has yet to get its anechoic chamber., So you can see that below 80 hertz, our AC unit in our building, came on and that kind of threw off the results so ignore that.. For the most part, the mic is very, very flat all the way up to about 1,500 hertz. After around the 1,500 hertz region.
The microphone kind of starts to dip.. That’S gon na make you sound a little muffled.. A lot of important speech sounds like T’s.
F’S P’s, a lot of the consonants and stuff exist in that space. You’re, not gon na be unintelligible, but maybe just a little muffled.. At the end of the day, I think that the Meze’s they’re a nice luxury-feeling pair of headphones..
They look so good. And they sound pretty great too. And they’re gon na cost you about $ 309., But for the next two weeks Meze is hooking our audience up with a special deal..
It’S easy, just click the link in the description and use the code SHORTCIRCUIT20 at checkout. You’ll save 20 % on your purchase of the 99 Classics in either walnut silver, which we just talked about or walnut gold. The better color. Plus that code will also get you free shipping on your new pair of 99 Classics. Thanks for watching this video.. If you liked it well, there’s a lot more where these came from. So why don’t you hit that subscribe button and then check out future videos And if you didn’t, like it, tell your enemies? .