A Mini-Review of the Meze 99 Classics

On a whim I added the Meze 99 Classics to my Amazon cart, ‘cause they were “only” like $200. Then they reset to $309 and I forgot about them, moved them to “save for later.” A quick peak at camelcamelcamel showed they basically never went on sale, so I’d either imagined it or I wasn’t fast enough.

Until... Burning the midnight oil the next day or so, I saw the pop-up that the price had gone down - to $219. There’d been some recent discussion on r/headphones that intrigued me, so I grabbed a pair. A couple of hours later they were back up to $309 and I haven’t seen them drop lower since. (An alternative: The Meze 99 Neo, specific for drop.com, are apparently indistinguishable from the Classics aside from the colorway, and are currently $179, down from $199.) (As of this writing, they’re $219 again; it’s 1:53 a.m., maybe there’s a pattern here?)

I don’t have any closed back headphones I listen to regularly. (I use the Ultrasone Pro 580i for video editing etc., but they’re a little too harsh, IMHO, to just kick back and listen to, plus they’re a little cumbersome with how I have them set up with the combined cable, the mounted ModMic USB, etc.)

Anyway. I’ve had a chance to put them through their paces a few times now, A/B comparing with Sennheiser HD58x and HD600 (both open back). Both sets were being driven by a Shanling M1s with flat EQ and high gain, using inexpensive ($16/ea Amazon) 4.4mm balanced cables (Meze 99 / HiFiMan HE400se; Sennheiser HD58x / 600). Sources were FLAC files (mostly 16/48) ripped from my own CDs.

The M1s with the Meze 99 Classic and Sennheiser HD58x Jubilee headhphones

I was mostly curious if they're really "bass cannons" as some have said, and how they compared to open back headphones like the Sennheisers.

(I'll dive into them more later re things like sound stage and detail.)

Verdict: They're not that bass heavy, but they handle bass-heavy music very well. If a track prominently features bass (e.g., Katy Perry’s Dark Horse, Taylor Swift’s ... Ready for It, Tool’s Opiate, NIN’s Down In It), it's right there, tight and prominent, without overwhelming the rest of the spectrum. Having recently seen Katy Perry’s Play show in Vegas, I could close my eyes and remember feeling the low hertz waves run through my body (we were in the third row).

Playing the same tracks on the Sennheisers (which are harder to drive, too, FWIW; significantly higher impedance and lower sensitivity; what was volume level ~40 on the Meze was more like 65 on the Jubilees), the bass was still there, but more bashful, I could hear it but wished it would speak up a bit, make its presence felt more.

Listening to non-bass-heavy tracks (Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Taylor’s softer (more country) earlier tracks, Katy’s Lost), the Meze and the Sennheisers both sounded overall fairly balanced, no part of either sound signature was particularly distracting.

I haven't spent hours with the 99s yet like I have the Sennheisers, and holy hell you have to be careful with your hair with the headband on the Meze (can't just toss them on, unless your locks are securely pulled back), so there may be other considerations I haven't run into yet. But so far, they're my new favorite pair of cans, at least for some types of listening. They do have a much more narrow soundstage compared to, e.g., the HD600s, and some records, like Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink, are a lot less immersive. For purely technical listening, the HD600s are the better headphones (and should be, MSRP is like 45% higher ($450 vs. $309), though I didn’t pay that 😉).

Even better when I tracked down the innerfidelity harman curve recommended settings for a 10 band EQ (e.g. an “octave” EQ), like the one in the Sony Walkman NW-ZX300.