This new model follows on the recent introduction of the Elite Isodynamic Hybrid Array headphones, Meze Audio's most advanced planar magnetic headphones. Unfortunately, the Elite's remained faithful to the company's previous goth-rock-inspired efforts - which seem to have been designed to be part of an H.R. Giger world - forcing its users to restrict its use to dungeons and caves, away from the eyes of innocent others.
In an effort to create a more discreet product that remains faithful to the brand's "Transylvanian" origins, the new LIRIC headphones are a lush, all-black leather design with a large well-padded headband. Combining high-grade magnesium, leather and aluminum in an ergonomic design, this is a product intended for discerning headphone enthusiasts who want to enjoy their passion both in and outside the house or while commuting, for hours on end.
As Meze details, each material was carefully selected to complete the other, referencing the textures found on magnesium parts of professional photo cameras and preserving that same tactile experience, while demonstrating an outstanding wear resistance.
“We’ve been wanting to do a portable planar for a while, and following two successful collaborations with Rinaro, it was a natural next step. Naming it LIRIC was not a game of chance. It was an ideal metaphor to paint the authentic, vivid and poetic sound disguised behind its sculptural silhouette,” explains Antonio Meze, the lead designer and founder of Meze Audio.
Created exclusively for Meze Audio, LIRIC’s MZ4 driver was purposefully scaled down and tuned to deliver a similar audio experience with its larger counterpart found in the top-range Empyrean. Combined with the closed-back design, the result helps preserve the clarity and emotion of music, delivering an enhanced sound experience that minimizes external noise.
"It's been a complex and challenging project to scale down our award-winning technology into a closed-back headphone design. After almost 3 years of intensive work alongside our partners at Meze Audio, we have achieved that goal - with LIRIC, the flagship sound goes truly portable, representing a new milestone in the application of the Isodynamic Hybrid Array technology," adds Pavlo Shymanovych, founder of Rinaro Isodynamics.
An innovation to the MZ4 driver is the Phase-XTM system, created by Rinaro as a way to minimize phase nonlinearity issues, typically found in closed-back headphone designs. This patent-pending technology helps improve the accuracy of spatial imaging, in line with its open back counterparts, which is especially noticeable on binaural recordings.
A blend of high build quality, excellent comfort and superior sound reproduction, the LIRIC headphones are hand-assembled with care and painstaking attention to detail in the company's own facilities in Romania. Now available for pre-order worldwide, retailing for 2,000 USD/EUR.
www.mezeaudio.com
