- Meze Audio unveils new elite Arta headphones at High End Vienna
- Due to sell for $6,000 / £6,000 (about AU$12,000)
- Bespoke driver and design for top-tier audio quality
The thought of mezze makes most of us hungry, but if you drop a ‘z’ and cap-up the ‘M’, you get an audio brand we’re constantly dishing out glowing reviews to — just see the glowing 4.5-star ratings we’ve recently handed out to the company’s Strada, 99 Classics 2nd Gen, Alba, 105 Silva and Poet in the last 12 months alone!
The brand is no stranger to expensive pieces of audio kit, but its new headphones are really pushing it, even in the elite realm.
As part of High End Vienna, Meze Audio has unveiled the Arta, a new pair of reference headphones with the competitive cost of $6,000 / £6,000 (about AU$12,000), a price at which you could find a very reliable second-hand car.
OK so they ain’t cheap, that’s for sure. We also don’t know when they’re going to be available to buy, though High End Vienna on June 4 will mark their first public appearance.
For clarity, the Meze Audio 105 Silva, listed above, sells for just a twelfth of the price of these flagship new headphones, so this is an important moment for the headphone specialist. But if price is no object and you have the ears to back it up, this work of art (work of Arta?) might just justify itself.
The best part’a the Meze Arta? The driver
There are a few unique selling points that make the Meze Arta something special.
One is the driver, made by Rinaro. It’s called the MZ5 HΩ, and Meze Audio claims it’s the highest-impedance planar magnetic headphone driver ever created, thus far. That impedance is 225Ω, which I thought was a typo in my press release initially.
According to the brand, it creates a “warm-neutral sound signature”, with a natural-sounding presentation and soundstage. The frequency range is an impressive 3Hz – 115kHz, far exceeding the human ear’s 20Hz – 20kHz capabilities (but no, we don’t recommend placing them over your cat’s ears, so they might enjoy frequencies you can’t).
The Arta uses an open design with the use of acoustic blades on the cups, designed to minimize soundwave reflections inside the device. The rest of the model uses a combination of carbon fiber, leather and other metals, to create a premium look and feel. It weighs 495g, so it’s a little heavy against direct competition in the wireless mass-produced space — but remember, this is elite territory.
In Meze’s unveiling of the Arta, the company’s acoustic engineer Alex Grigoras said the headphones “came into existence from asking the same question over and over: what is there still between the listener and the music? … We’ve arrived at something that doesn’t quite sound like headphones anymore, but simply music occupying real space”.
We have quotes and stats, but Meze Audio hasn’t revealed everything about these headphones just yet. There’s no word on connectivity, for example, and I’d love to find out how they feel during wear. Luckily, TechRadar will have reporters at the ground in Vienna, to find that out. Watch this space!
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tom.bedford@hotmail.co.uk (Tom Bedford)
