Just posting the measurements and some impressions here. I spent the afternoon with the Meze Elite yesterday and took them with me to the interior for the weekend. This way not only do I get to have a more thorough evaluation over a longer period of time, I also get to deprive @taronlissimore of being able to listen to them. Such joy is this feeling.
I should preface this by saying I fall into the camp of those who did not enjoy the original Empyrean’s sound all that much - both for its sound signature and its technical performance. While I know a lot of people love that headphone, and there were some things I enjoyed about it, I found it to be too muddy/soupy in the upper bass and lower mids, as well as too piercing and shimmery in the upper treble, with too much contrast between ear gain and upper treble. Moreover, I didn’t find it to be particularly competitive for its detail at that price point either. So I’ve been curious if the Elite improves on those aspects that I wasn’t a big fan of.
Amps used for the initial evaluation:
Vioelectric HPA V550
Cayin IHA-6
iBasso DX220 (balanced out).
Frequency response:
At first glance this looks a bit strange in the bass and lower mids. In particular, the sub-bass appears to have some strange behavior. The on-head measurement, however shows that this feature is smoothed out a bit, so that abrupt dropoff might not be realistic. Additionally, there’s some really strange stuff going on around 350hz. I’m told this is likely a particular driver mode, and curiously this doesn’t show up on the regular Empyrean. Nonetheless, the bass is a bit less… bloated and boomy than the original, even though I do hear the lower registers of piano tones kind of getting lost down there still.
For the rest of its tuning, however, in my opinion the Elite is a marginal if not significant improvement over the original. Specifically, when it comes to the treble, the Elite has a much more even presentation, without that shimmery boost around 11khz. More importantly, the treble harmonics are all well balanced with one another, so you don’t get as significant of a contrast between lower/mid treble and the upper treble.
So in my opinion, apart from the… esoteric bass and lower mids, the Elite has a generally pleasant, balanced, albeit somewhat relaxed presentation overall that I quite enjoy.
Let’s take a look at how it compares against the original. sorry for the lower res, I’m on my laptop and it’s does weird scaling things at 4k. I’ll update this with high res when I get a chance:
So, there’s a similarity, but the original Empyrean is bassier, with more upper bass bleed into the lower mids. While the 43AG isn’t rated for accuracy in the upper treble frequencies the way it is for the rest of the FR, you can still see there’s more energy around 12-13khz on the original, and this is what caused it to be a bit fatiguing for me.
Here’s the on-head response:
You can see that the bass roll below 60hz is not as abrupt on my head - so this is likely smoothed out by the pads conforming to the side of my head (which is… shockingly not an ear and cheek simulator).
Here’s the air gap behavior:
You can see that the driver resonance frequency is decently low - slightly below 100hz. It’s unlikely you’ll hear it like this but this does give an indication for what the driver damping is like. Here I’d say… nothing particularly noteworthy jumps out at me.
Now let’s do the harmonic distortion (remember this does not have anything to do with detail):
It all seems well-controlled - a good result in my books and all far below audibility. You do see the rise there where that ‘feature’ is around 350hz, but again well below being audible even at dangerous volumes.
Now let’s do some pad comparisons. One thing to note is that the original Empyrean and the Elite both have leather pads, but the Elite’s leather pads are around half as thick. They both also come with suede/velour material (I’m not sure what it’s called on these, someone can let me know) pads as well.
I recommend sticking with the leather pads on the Elite. The Suedes drop off in the bass a bit too much and also bring back the upper treble shimmer.
Here’s the Elite with the original Empyrean leather pads (thicker):
For those wanting to see the regular Empyrean with the suede pads vs the Elite with default, here you go:
A few other thing to note:
Detail - The Elite does sound a bit more incisive than the original to my ear, but while I did hear a difference there, the bigger difference was that the Elite was generally more pleasant and more clear due to its tonal balance changes.
*Edit - listening more off the DX220, it almost sounds like the relaxed presentation for ear gain is a minor impediment to detail, but it was kind of like that on the original too. This may be responsible for the perception. I’ll need to EQ that up and see.
Soundstage - Really nice on this one. It’s relaxed, open and spacious sounding presentation. Nothing is too intense or in your face.
Macro contrast (dynamics) - This is actually not that bad (most planars struggle with this). It’s not going to take your head off like the HE-6 or Abyss, some of the few that are excellent here, so the Elite still has a somewhat ‘softer’ presentation rather than the aggressive and intense kind of thing that those headphones have, but it’s not too compressed in the fashion that detracts from the music like certain other planars can sometimes be. The overall bass presentation is still a bit ‘flubby’ at times, but this is the consequence of not having a particularly distinct sub-bass shelf and the upper bass level being a bit too strong.
Overall, my take so far is that while the original Empyrean wasn’t my cup of tea, the Elite improves on the aspects that were my primary concern, namely the upper treble contrast, and the upper bass and lower midrange bloat - even if it didn’t quite fix all of the issues I had with it. For my taste, they should’ve aimed for a more linear bass response, although this is all stuff that I’d probably EQ anyway, since normally you can’t get an ideal bass shelf with an open-back planar anyway (unless you do some… trickery).
Here’s my EQ for the Elite for anyone wanting it:
