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Meze Audio 105 Silva: Two-minute review
The Meze Audio 105 Silva are open-back headphones that don’t act like open-back headphones – and I think I’m a fan. Where open-backs usually trade bassy fullness for structure and measure, the 105 Silva do a bang-up job of reinforcing low-end for a gratifyingly pillowy result; this pillow lies beneath some of the best treble performance I’ve heard in a mid-range pair of headphones, too, with beautifully-balanced air and a keen-yet-forgiving transient response.
These headphones excel as at-home headphones, and especially so if you’ve a tranche of remastered jazz records to listen through. The more brick-wall limited a song is, though, the less fun you’re likely to have with these, dynamics-hungry as they are.
The 105 Silva are also as gratifyingly comfortable as any of the best wired headphones, with a well-designed self-adjusting headband and some decadent velour-enrobed ear-cushions to slip yourself between. I think Meze Audio have achieved almost precisely that which they aimed to achieve with this mid-range set, but that the narrow soundstage and fluffy low end could turn some fundamentalist open-back adherents away. More for me, maybe!
Meze Audio 105 Silva review: Price and release date
- Released July 23, 2025
- $499 / £469 / AU$999
Meze Audio has been mucking up the hi-fi industry since 2010, and, in my opinion, has done for headphones what Pro-Ject did for turntables back in the 00s – just see the much-pricier Meze Audio Poet for reference, at a cool $2,000 / £1,899 / AU$3,550.
And the 105 Silva are much cheaper than their excellent siblings – think high-quality European design, assembled in Europe and sold at a price that makes you go “wait what? OK!”.
I make no attempt to hide my love for Meze headphones past, be they the 99 Classics that still get use in my studio, or the ultra-high-end Poet that blew me away not too long ago. The Silva sits between these two, being a mid-range pair of open-back headphones designed exclusively for the cosy, immersive listen.
The Meze Audio 105 Silva are the second pair of headphones in the 105 series, and a clear development on the 105 AER that came before. Gone are the art deco PC-ABS earcups, replaced with a fetching mid-century walnut-heavy design; gone is the close, sumptuous tuning of the 50mm dynamic drivers, replaced with a brighter, broader and altogether more ‘fidelitous’ approach (if I may neologise).
Silva is a Romanian word, meaning ‘forest’. Meze Audio wants you to look at those sumptuous walnut ear cups and envision nature; to slip between those outrageously-comfortable ear pads and feel safety; to experience the softness of its sound profile and feel nurtured. Can such bucolic Transylvanian headphones promise such bucolic Transylvanian serenity?
Meze Audio 105 Silva review: Features
- 5Hz – 30kHz frequency response
- 42 ohms impedance
- USB-C DAC adapter
Meze Audio’s 105 Silva headphones are passive, open-back listening headphones – the ideal platform for at-home enjoyment of your eclectic record collection, your esoteric FLAC library or your immersive audiovisual storytelling experience. No schmancy tech gimmicks here; just great sound and you.
The 105 Silva deliver that great sound through some prodigiously-engineered 50mm drivers. A carbon fibre-reinforced cellulose composite dome combines durability with a lightness of weight, making for a considered reproduction of high-end information and a clever attenuation of unwanted resonances; the dome is encircled by a semicrystalline polymer torus, titanium-coated for fast attack and precisely grooved for more resonance control.
The result is a pair of headphones that exists in two states simultaneously: tension and relaxation, taut transients and thrumming bass. But more on this shortly. For specs, you’ll find an impressive frequency range of 5Hz – 30kHz and a 42-ohm impedance; the latter’s a tiny bit disappointing, if only for the fact that these aren’t smartphone fare. There’s more potential posed by driving these drivers a little harder from your hi-fi than there is convenience for keeping the impedance low, in my humble and completely subjective opinion.
Being passive headphones, the 105 Silva are of course wired for sound, and use dual-twisted, Kevlar-wrapped OFC cable to supply said wiring. Each ear cup hosts a mono TS port, so you can attach and detach with ease for transport; you can also be sure that each channel of audio is robustly connected. It’s naked, minimal and minimises points of failure all-round – all of which amount to top marks from me.
For those of that use smartphones for all things audio, you can still enjoy the 105 Silva out of the box, too; Meze Audio has lovingly included a custom 3.5mm TRS to USB-C adapter, which includes its own DAC. This is the techiest thing you’ll find in the box, and a good thing too.
Meze Audio 105 Silva review: Sound quality
- High-end response is peerless for the price
- Nice, airy mid-range
- Bass surprisingly fulsome
As you would expect from most open-back headphones above a certain budget-price threshold, the Meze Audio 105 Silva are a pair dead-set on tactility. Between some measured soundstaging and delightful transient control, these cans deliver something comfortingly immersive above all else.
World Brain’s Minute papillon is a lassez-faire melange of syncopated synths, je-ne-cest-quoi ambiance and other such French-transplant turns of Romantic phrase; the 105 Silva resolve its light-stab electric pianos and dead-straight drums with a playful air. High-end information is delivered with space and grace, sharp enough to carve out its own place in your ears but soft enough not to insist upon itself in the process.
Andy Shauf’s debut collection of small-folk heartbreakers The Bearer Of Bad News, meanwhile, is a good carrier for both the dynamic potential of the 105 Silva and their incredible stereo imaging; I’m Not Falling Asleep is all slurred clarinets and ever-resonating piano before a huge, sparse beat and Shauf’s plaintive tone.
Separation between elements is impressive, too. The end section of I’m Not Falling Asleep is just voices and clarinets in stereo-spread choral harmony, and Shauf’s stacked voices seem as if to coast above the woodwinds like an air-hockey puck would on one of the good machines.
A little later in the record, Wendell Walker brings some excellent resolution of distance; close-strummed guitars and distant piano bass, diametrically opposed but united with a gloriously-staged, wrap-around drumkit that spikes up through the warmth with polish, presence and power. Even with the most maximalist, blown-out feats of electro-pop heft in my library – particularly, Normalize by Gelli Haha – there’s a palpable sense of space behind the sausaged synth-basses and punching-bag-to-the-face kicks.
Well-spaced as these elements are, there is a surprisingly close limit to their spread. These aren’t the widest headphones I’ve tried, sure, but the surprise is that I’ve heard wider closed-backs. Indeed, the 105 Silva, to me, exhibit some behaviours more redolent of closed-back designs than others.
This is reinforced by the overall bass response of those carefully-tuned 50mm drivers. Though brighter and airier than 105 drivers prior, here the low end is still suitably springy, and enjoys an unusual bloomy fullness. Open-backs typically don’t possess this fulsomeness, as they allow that placeless subby energy to dissipate outwards; here, though, there’s a sense of constructive interference usually reserved for closed-back systems. And it’s kind of glorious.
The 105 Silva do seem to respond better to some sounds than others. The aforementioned Normalize suffers for its brick-walled, low-dynamic clown-pop maximalism, where the Silva seems not quite sure on how to handle the lack of real movement. Listening to high-dynamic live-instrument arrangements, like Billy Valentine And The Universal Truth’s jazzy re-imagining of We People Who Are Darker Than Blue, feels like finally unlocking the Universal Truth of these headphones; the thing they were designed for.
The 50mm drivers handle bloomy double-bass with active measure, as if an occult hand were manually pushing the fader up for moments of “a-ha!” crescendo. The transient response is keen but not sharp, and the breath behind each saxophonic missive a textural delight. ‘Cosiness’ seems the ultimate state these headphones strive for.
- Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5
Meze Audio 105 Silva review: Design
- Gorgeous-looking things
- Gratifyingly simple practical design
- And deeply comfortable, too
These headphones are an obvious winner in the aesthetics camp; have you seen them?! Everything about the design is tasteful, from the materials and proportionality of the earcups to the highly-satisfying minimalism of the metal bands that connect them. Walnut, pleather and velour present a united front of understatedly decadent luxury – an enticing wear if ever you saw them.
Speaking of wearing them, the 105 Silva’s headband is a lightweight and lightly-cushioned self-adjusting affair. I’m extremely impressed, again, by the coincident simplicity and practicality on display here. There’s no aggressive ratcheting or re-adjustment; the 105 Silva simply rests exactly where it needs to, with a softness of touch a far cry from the intrusive clamp other such headphones deign to visit upon your potentially-sensitive bonce.
Speaking of sensitivity, I have known no headphone more comfortable than a Meze Audio headphone – especially with the plush, velour-enrobed ear-cushions provided on the 105 Silva. Similar comfort has been experienced on Sennheiser ‘phones past, but none so gratifyingly smooth about the concha.
The 105 Silva come in a sturdy contoured fabric hardcase, with a reassuring firmness and even more reassuringly weatherproof zip; if you did fancy taking these out and about, this right here is a trustworthy receptacle for such adventures. There’s also a neatly-designed cylindrical soft case within, for your cables and adapters and whatnot – so designed to nestle within the Silva’s headband, and to not risk any jostle-related damage in transit. It’s a simple gesture, but one that sparks a not-inconsiderable amount of joy in me.
In all, there’s nothing really to fault the 105 Silva on design-wise. There’s comfort by the spade, eye-candy by the trowel and simplicity at the core of it all. A serene pair.
Meze Audio 105 Silva review: Value
- Incredible comfort in the listening experience
- …but one you pay a price for
- Sound profile could be divisive, too
Value’s always a difficult thing to pin down with audio products, and especially so when the audio product in question isn’t all-singing, all-dancing. It’s easier to signal that something’s worth the whack when it’s got more features than you’ve got fingers, even if those features exist on products one tenth the price.
So, when it comes to a pair of passive headphones like the Meze Audio 105 Silva, there’s a lot of figurative weight in one place: the quality of the listening experience. I’m in no position to say that you need to spend this much money in order to have fun with your music collection – but, if you like the sound of soft tactility hand-in-hand with thick sonority, maybe it would help.
Bear in mind, too, that this unique listening experience is backed up by a prioritisation of listening comfort, and by attention-to-detail in pursuing the same. There’s balance in that self-adjusting headband, and in those Goldilocks ear-cushions. All this, steeped in minimal mid-century modern aesthetic, as if to say, “Romania does hygge too”.
I’ve had more fun with cheaper headphones before, and I’ve had far less fun with more expensive headphones too. I do think the 105 Silva have a great deal going for them aesthetically and ergonomically, which goes a long way to justifying their position in the market; the sound, though, is the singular thing about which most decisions ought to pivot – and the Silva’s unique performance could make this subjective decision either really easy, or really hard, for the prospective buyer.
Meze Audio 105 Silva review: Should you buy them?
|
Attributes |
Notes |
Rating |
|---|---|---|
|
Features |
The inclusion of a custom 3.5mm TRS to USB-C adapter, which has its own DAC, is a classy touch |
4 / 5 |
|
Sound quality |
The 105 Silva excel with respect to high-end reproduction, with all the ear-candy detail you could ask for. The bass is a little more bloomy than you might expect from open-backs, but this is (often, at least) to their credit. |
4.5 / 5 |
|
Design |
These are some singularly fetching headphones, with that tasteful walnut-imbued mid-century earcup design and that minimal-yet-maximal PU leather headband. You won’t begrudge having these adorn your desk, to say the least. |
5 / 5 |
|
Value |
The 105 Silva offer incredible comfort, both literally and with respect to sound profile. That bloomy bass could be enough to switch some off, but the rest is Goldilocks-level balance. |
4 / 5 |
Buy them if…
Don’t buy them if…
Meze Audio Poet review: Also consider
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
Meze Audio 105 Silva |
Meze Audio 105 AER |
Sennheiser HD 505 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Type: |
Over-ear |
Over-ear |
Over-ear |
|
Open-back or closed-back: |
Open-back |
Open-back |
Open-back |
|
Driver: |
50mm dynamic; bio-cellulose, titanium-coated semicrystalline polymer |
50mm dynamic, bio-cellulose, PEEK |
38mm dynamic |
|
Frequency range: |
5Hz – 30kHz |
5Hz – 30kHz |
12Hz to 38.5kHz |
|
Impedance: |
42 ohms |
42 ohms |
120 ohms |
|
Connector: |
Dual 3.5mm TS output |
Dual 3.5mm TS output |
Proprietary locking cable output |
|
Weight: |
354g |
336g |
237g |
|
Extras: |
Carry case, soft pouch for cables, 3.5mm TRS to dual 3.5mm TS cable, 3.5mm TRS to USB-C adapter w/ integrated DAC, 3.5mm TRS to 6.35mm TRS adapter |
Carry case, soft pouch for cables, 3.5mm TRS to dual 3.5mm TS cable, 3.5mm TRS to USB-C adapter w/ integrated DAC, 3.5mm TRS to 6.35mm TRS adapter |
Drawstring pouch, stereo cable with 3.5mm TRS plug, 3.5mm TRS to 6.35mm TRS adapter |
Meze Audio 105 Silva review: How I tested
- Tested for 3 week(s)
- Used as listening headphones, at home
- Predominantly tested via Edifier MR5 headphone output, through Universal Audio Volt 4 interface
The Meze Audio 105 Silva spent three weeks adorning my fancy new Ikea desk, in my attic office. There, they were my primary set of headphones for focused listening to my digital library of FLACs and 320kbps MP3s – with some ancillary listening on Spotify – via my Volt 4 audio interface and Edifier’s MR5 monitor speakers’ headphone output.
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