Meze introduces Liric: luxury closed-back headphones

The ink has barely dried on the Meze’s Elite flagship announcement when today comes news of a closed-back planar-magnetic model – one that can partake in outdoor life – but aimed at deeper wallets than the Romanian company’s exceedingly popular 99 Classics whose closed-back earshells house dynamic drivers. The Liric (that’s ‘lyric’ in Romanian) is notably more compact than the forerunning Empyrean and Elite open-backs and ships with a travel case that could easily be dropped into a backpack.

The Liric’s earcup frame and its surrounding structure are made of magnesium, the adjustment sliders of aluminium and the headband of sprung steel for a total headphone weight of 391g. A shorter 3.5mm terminated cable joins a longer (also 3.5mm terminated) run in the box.

That headband is wrapped in leather and cushioned on the underside with four pads positioned to permit cross-shaped airflow. Leather shows up again on the earcups which have are ovoid-shaped for better circumaural fit and better passive isolation (according to the manufacturer).

The copper disc on the backside of each earcup houses Liric’s ‘Pressure Equalization System’ that aims to relieve the inner ear chamber of pressure and add some air to the Meze headphone’s sound.

Meze has once again teamed up with the Ukraine’s Rinaro for an new ‘MZ4’ driver that scales down the Empyrean/Elite’s Isodynamic Hybrid array: a switchback coil takes care of lower frequencies and the spiral coil that sits beneath fires mid-high frequencies directly into the ear canal for “improved 3D imaging and spatial localization”, according to the press release.

New to the MZ4 variant is Meze/Rinaro’s patent-pending Phase X™ system that takes aim at the phase distortions introduced by a closed-back earcup to improve the Liric’s spatial cue accuracy and headstage image width. According to the Romanian manufacturer, Liric’s nominal input impedance registers at 30 Ohms, its sensitivity at 100dB and THD at under 0.15%.

Meze has set Liric pricing at US$2000 / €2000.

Further information: Meze Audio