To be fair, after trying Meze I can only say that they're just mid af for sound, but 10/10 for build quality and comfort. I definitely prefer my HE1000se over the Elite.
I have Focal Bathys and Meze Elite. I bought the Bathys for travel, but I find myself using them more that the Elites. I suppose that I like the closed back sound better.
It is a slippery slope, isn't it? I started with 2 pairs of Momentum 4s, just for travel ( I told myself ) bought off Fleabay. They wouldn't connect to the app. So... 1 Sony XM6 and 2 pairs of Bathys later, I was happy. Until my local audio store had an open box sale. Sigh.
Fiio m27 and Meze Elites now on my table. I auditioned the Elites an a Hugo TT2, which surprise! Beat the pants off the M27. More sighing. Now, like a heroine addict, I'm chasing the heavenly, sublime sound those Elites are capable of. I forsee more money being spent.
All I can suggest is to go back and try Meze Elites. Super comfortable. I went in expecting to buy Empyrean II, walked out with Elites. It's all subjective, of course.
My favorite headphones are the meze elite, and they share a lot of similarities to the 105 aer as said in another comment. Other headphones I tend to enjoy on the daily are hd560s, hd6xx, dt1990 and the he1000 stealth. Although as I said, the 105 aer tends to be my daily pick. They sound amazing and are very comfortable!
Edit: forgot about music. It depends somewhat on the headphone. The meze elite is very fun with movie scores and big symphonies, but on the daily i listen to anything from ásgeir to some Ren. 105 aer works for it all.
Agreed! I have a pair of 105 aer and a pair of meze elite. While they are obviously in different leagues, they are very fun to A/B due to their very similar characteristics
Well done! They are by far the best sounding headphones out there in my opinion. I find it quite fun to swap between 105 AER and Elite during listening sessions. It really highlights just how great the elites are (and also how well the 105 AERs keep up)
I use an HD 800, and it’s elite.
I disagree with people that say “no bass,” it actually has a fair bit of impact and crisp attack due to almost no resonance or mud, and the huge driver creates plenty of air displacement (you’ll feel it on your skin too!) but it is tuned to have “studio bass” and not the stronger reverberant bass most of us are used to. And, most $100 amps or DAC/amp combo units hamstring its performance, it scales well with good amps (and responds well to EQ). The cheapest
After the HD 800, most other headphones feel veiled or muddy or resonant by comparison. It’s like… hyper awareness, easier to separate and pick up on little details than it would be in real life. The earcups are HUGE: no issues with my ears touching anything, heat vents well, they’re surprisingly light but the cups are almost too big for me.
I use an HD 800, and it’s elite.
I disagree with people that say “no bass,” it actually has a fair bit of impact and crisp attack due to almost no resonance or mud, and the huge driver creates plenty of air displacement (you’ll feel it on your skin too!) but it is tuned to have “studio bass” and not the stronger reverberant bass most of us are used to. And, most $100 amps or DAC/amp combo units hamstring its performance, it scales well with good amps (and responds well to EQ).
After the HD 800, most other headphones feel veiled or muddy or resonant by comparison. It’s like… hyper awareness, easier to separate and pick up on little details than it would be in real life. The earcups are HUGE: no issues with my ears touching anything, heat vents well, they’re surprisingly light but the cups are almost too big for me.
Yeah, I got to borrow the HD 800S for an extensive period, and I have an HD 820 and HD 8xx too 😅 Things find their way to me, but I also try to attend CanJam trade shows.
I respect Audeze, but even the LCD5 feels distant and a bit softer impact than the HD 800, so it’s more cozy and really fun as a warm headphone but doesn’t put me on the edge of my seat like the Sennheiser’s.
I actually liked the Meze Elite and Empyrean quite a bit, warm but with quite a bit of that snap I like about the HD 800(S), but… price? And it’s more of a different flavor in a side grade.
Stax L700 Mk II, it’s extremely airy and light, handling all audio with delicate finesse, but electrostats are kind of a pain to live with. Amazing in the right setup. Surprisingly comfortable too. There’s a bit of an excursion limit you might run into with bass, but this takes that “more clear than real” feeling to the extreme… if you’ll excuse the foolish subjective metaphor, it’s like watching a ballerina twirling an 18-wheeler truck in the air. It’s impossible, no way should something that delicate be performing those feats of strength, but already she caught the truck and before you’re ready the freight is flung back into the air again, both bodies pirouetting in sync 😂 No doubt it would be amazing for gaming, but I might wish for more foundational bass, and like I said estat setups are kind of a pain.
First time I heard the Dan Clark Audio (then Mr. Speakers) Ether was right after the first time I heard the HD 800. While I didn’t have quite the same body response as the HD 800, honestly I think for music I preferred the timbre of the Ether. Future Ethers also sounded great with small FR changes, bit more clarity from the airflow control, but the closed versions just don’t do it for me… I’ll do low fat mayo, no problem, but the Ether C’s are fat free and just sound too thin in the midbass and it sounds weird in timbre too. The DCA Stealth was an improvement over former closed back models, but I’d still stick with open back ones.
First time I heard the HD 800, I could FEEL the air pushing the tiny hairs on the surface of my skin, and could feel chills and goosebumps prickling down my spine. ASMR! That’s only happened for me with the HD 800, HE-1, the first 64 Audio IEM with the Apex module I heard (I forget which one, but honestly I’ve been back and I loved them all), and the Fostex TH-900 when it was hooked up to Fostex’s extreme and now discontinued HP-V8 tube amp. If anyone finds a modern amp that sounds like that HP-V8, I NEED it, holy grail tbh, transforms any headphone connected to it 😁 But, for the price, HD 800 + Liquid Cavalli Carbon + Mojo 2 (would like Qutest some day), I’m really happy, and sub out the DAC for a usb audio class 1 DAC that works with PlayStation and I’m in bliss, wanting nothing.
At the end of the day, the HD 800 won out for me due to price, and that whole body response that I can’t tie to a specific trait of the sound. It kind of walks the knife’s edge of being sparkly and being too much, but with the right amps it’s no problem, just honest. If I could, I’d rather have the HD 800S than the 800. The 800 has the last word in detail and sharpness, but I’d trade a bit of that edge for the bit of less dry bass in the HD 800S, also the HD 800S is a bit kinder on the ears for longer sessions. The tradeoffs are minimal for better comfort, and I think the performance is still very high (and priced lower than summit fi from other companies, feels weird to say but a good value for people shopping the high end).
Ok, so on a whim I looked at the RME ADI-2 product page to see what I could see. Obviously you could use a TV’s optical return channel to at least get digital sound to the RME, and that might also be a nice option if you want to leave the USB or coax inputs plugged into something else.
But ideally, we want to use USB, because the PlayStation 5 has awesome HEADPHONE SURROUND processing that is enabled through USB or the controller (bleh!), but last I checked Sony had not responded to requests to enable headphone surround on the HDMI output (which the TV would then passthrough to the RME by optical, or those HDMI to optical audio extractors). What does seem promising is the RME ADI-2 page advertising a “Class Compliant Mode.” I think you’d have to read the manual to learn how to enable that mode –probably a long manual, due to so many features, but maybe there’s an index in the back? It could be a dead end though. Sometimes manufacturers promise a load of features that they’ll eventually add via firmware update, and then never feel it’s important to actually follow through on. Not everyone realizes what the Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 4/5 want to work with USB.
I guess another solution, if needed: the FiiO E12K can act as a DDC, connecting to the PS5 with usb and outputting digital audio via coax.
Anyway, I hope my curiosity sparks your curiosity 😂. Nice DAC/amps do wonders for the effect of Spatial Audio! Sony’s DSP, called “Tempest 3D Audio” if you want to search the web for mentions of it, has very little reverb for the sensation of greater distance, but that also means it’s a rather clean DSP, and there’s even a little personalization activity you can do to help it adapt to the variations in how each of us perceive audio directions. The modern Hitman series and Hunt: Showdown are some impressive examples, and naughty dog put a pretty good headphone HRTF in earlier versions of The Last of Us (I haven’t purchased the latest remasters, so I don’t know LOL). If Halo Reach comes to PlayStation, that will be amazing as well! The CoD games have distinct directionality, but it doesn’t change the audio “direction” to differentiate between sounds above and below, sometimes leading me to think someone was around the corner when actually they were on a different floor 😂 It’s really cool though, immersive and competitive. Once you get used to headphone surround, playing WITHOUT it feels like you’re wearing stereo blinders and games sound much less realistic.
48-Cobras
