Sorry to disappoint, but there’s no way I’m going to equal @driftingbunnies’ amazing review. 
I just had my turn in the Empyrean world tour and demo’d the headphones for four days. I’m coming to this evaluation from a very inexperienced place, I think this was only the second time in my life I’ve ever listened to planar-magnetic headphones and the only other time was a pair of LCD3s for just a few minutes in an audio shop’s showroom. I’m comparing the Empyrean against my only other “real” headphones which are some Drop HD6XX and my daily drivers which are a pair of Focal Stellia (see my previous review here).
For gear I was driving the Empyrean with a Focal Arche, a Monoprice Monolith THX AAA 887, and a Topping DX7 Pro. I used my MiniDSP ears simply to level-match the output when comparing tracks across the headphones.
The first thing I noticed is that these are by far the most comfortable headphones I’ve ever worn. After wearing my Stellia pretty much all day, every day for the past year I was reminded how wonderful a lighter-weight, open-back headphone can be. The one caveat to this comfort is that my completely boring and average-sized head fit inside at the absolute smallest setting of the Empyrean. My girlfriend, who I’ve always considered to also have a very normal and average sized head couldn’t wear them comfortably at all, the ear cups ended up sitting low on the sides of her face and the drivers were not even close to being well-aligned with her ear canals. After reading how proud Meze are about the array layout in these headphones it was sort of surprising that they appear to have only accounted for particularly large-headed listeners:
Her earlobes got the full force of the headphone’s “power focus” until we folded up a hand towel and put it on top of her head to offset the headphone adjustments.
The tonal choices in the Empyrean were immediately obvious, and it was remarkable to hear the more forward bass and mids as compared to the treble-focused Stellia that I am used to. I dug out my old, trusty “wonky bass” tag in Roon and really appreciated the alternative presentation from the Meze. I focused on tracks that make excellent use of bass but not necessarily “bass heavy” tracks, I think that’s where you can really explore how a headphone’s tone and delivery do or do not contribute to the overall listening experience. In some cases (Alta’s Thylacine for example) the bass was truly great and I preferred the Meze over the Focal just because of the fuller presentation. But other tracks like Bob Moses - Stealing Fire I wasn’t actually that impressed. The bass was full but muddied and smeary. With that track in particular I was worried maybe I was just exposing limitations of the recording, but comparing against non-headphone listening with good floor standing speakers and subwoofers I don’t think that’s the case, I think the Meze just didn’t do a very good job with that song’s particular non-impact bass riff. The empyrean just lost a bit of the musicality of the track.
What I found was that the stronger bass was very evident, but I can’t honestly say I preferred that over my Stellia. At least in this case, the equivalent price points do seem to really correlate. They were different, for sure, but I struggle to point in either direction qualatatively. Different but similar?
The soundstage seemed about as narrow as I find the Stellia (also not really stunners in this regard) and wasn’t anything particularly impressive. The much, much stronger bass and mids were fine insofar as it was, but maybe I’m just not a really “bassy” headphone guy? Without the thump in my chest I just didn’t find it compelling enough to have lost the crystal clear highs from the Focal. No aspect of the Empyrean really stuck out for me. They were exceedingly competent, very comfortable, but I wasn’t sad to box them up and ship them out to the next person in line.
I will say that my girlfriend strongly preferred the Meze to my Focal, so that’s a counterpoint.
I know if I had gone from 6XX to Empyrean I’d be singing their praises right now. They’re capital-G good headphones and I think worth their cost. But they weren’t as amazing as I’d hoped they might be and if I did have them in my collection I think I might struggle to add them to the rotation for any reasons beyond just physical comfort.
I think that there is a listener who would be very happy with these headphones, but that listener probably isn’t me. I don’t think I’ve done a great job with this review, but fundamentally I’m just not feeling a lot of enthusiasm for them. They were good. I’m glad I got to try them. They’re not on my wish list any more, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad headphones. They just didn’t really inspire me like I’d hoped they would.
A huge thanks to headphones.com for sponsoring this demo tour. I’ve been interested in these headphones for a while now and it was a great opportunity to give them a good test in my home with music I am familiar with.
Thanks for reading! If there’s one thing that I do rate five stars, it’s this community!