Sorry, I meant documentation for each individual involved…like taking pics after your turn was done, for example, as evidence of the state the headphones were in.
I thought it was part of the rules for the demo but I could be mistaken…
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It was a best practice, not a requirement.
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We all understand the situation. Leave follow up to the program administrator.
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Now that my time with the Empyrean is coming to a close, I’d like to say this was a pretty big eye opener for me.
I think Roark had a pretty good analogy with the ultrawide computer monitor, and along with the weird, super wide imaging, the monitor representing the Empyrean in that analogy also has the backlight turned to 100%, and the saturation turned way down. Sure, It’s a high resolution monitor, but it’s just not exciting to look at, and takes away from the experience as a whole.
Interestingly enough, they sounded the best out of my BTR5 (balanced or single ended) and gave me quite a few hours of enjoyable listening, but eventually I found they just weren’t for me.
I think my main issue stems from the timbre, which I perceive to sound rather plasticky. It could be my music taste, because there were a couple tracks that sounded exceptional on them (forbidden friendship from HTTYD soundtrack), but most suffered from that plastic timbre.
The earcups also felt a little too forward tilted so I was constantly second guessing if I had them on the right way.
The build on the other hand, Oh the build… I have never experienced another headphone with this much care taken to perfect each and every detail. The aesthetic wasn’t particularly my cup of tea, but I see what they were going for and they nailed it.
They’re very photogenic too. (as long as they’re not on your head)
I’ve still got a little bit of time left with them, so I’ll update this post if I have any more thoughts, but as it stands, TLDR: They weren’t what I was expecting, but they’re not bad.
They were a blast to photograph~
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To start off, I’d like to thank the Headphones team for putting this tour together! The Empyrean has been a headphone on my radar over the last year and a half to try out. I’ve given it a couple nights of listening at this point and gathered my thoughts. As a disclaimer, I haven’t experienced as wide of a variety of gear like some of the other members here and really didn’t start diving deep into audio until last year.
I did most of my listening off my Matrix XSP and iFi Pro iCan through Roon, so most of my sound impressions are coming off of that, with a few exceptions noted below. My other headphone on hand to compare against is my LCD-4. (I recently slimmed down my collection and any other real comparisons are based off memory)
Build/Comfort:
I don’t think much else needs to be said at this point regarding the build quality, it’s phenomenal. The sliders are perfectly tensioned and I’d never imagine they would slip over time, the angled connectors keep the mini-XLR ends away from my shoulders, and the earpad swapping mechanism is seamless.
One ding on the build quality is not the headphone itself, but the stock cable. Maybe out of the box brand new it would be tolerable, but the braided material they use from the end of the plug to the Y-split is pretty bad for this price. After being on the tour for several months, the wire has memory issues and I gave up after about 10 minutes of trying to straighten it out. It forms many twists and curls similar to those braided gaming peripheral cables after a year of use. Also the braiding material itself is pretty unpleasant and coarse/plasticky to the touch. It reminds me of some power supply cable sleeving I’ve handled before.
As for comfort, this is probably near the top of all headphones I’ve tried so far. However, there are a few things worth mentioning. The mechanism that tensions the earcups causes some additional pressure on the bottom of the earpad, and for some this could cause a hotspot after a while. I found the issue to be more noticeable with the leather pads and switched over to the suede ones for the remainder of my listening. (Also due listening preference which I’ll cover later) I feel the issue with the leather pads is they actually have a little too much give in the cushioning compared to the suede, which causes the lower part of the earpad to press in at a more acute angle.
Once the suede pads were on though, the comfort of these are excellent. They feel light, although using LCDs for months will make nearly anything feel like a feather. No issues with getting a seal and the benefit of the tension mechanism is that middle and upper portion of the earpad rest with just the right amount of clamp. The headband has worked well for me so far too, and I didn’t feel any hotspots develop over some several hour-long sessions. My only thought to improve it would be to vent/perforate the leather strap similar to how several other brands have been doing it now.
Sound:
I’ll keep this section relatively short as I feel there are others much more experienced in capturing the nature of this headphone. For reference, most of my listening was done with classic/modern rock, some EDM, techno/club, metal, and prog rock. With my usual listening I EQ my LCD-4 with some elevated lower and mid-bass plus several corrections for the upper mids that got left behind at the Audeze factory. Also, all extended listening was done with a slight bass shelf applied with the suede pads given the comfort issue I stated above, plus I found the leather pads were exaggerating the treble peak.
From everything I had read online prior to receiving this headphone, I was prepared to experience some potential bass bloat. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the out of the box tonality. I feel that a lot of people can easily get taken in by these on the first listen because of it, and if this was someone’s first experience with a really high end headphone it would be easy to be blown away. The bass elevation is noticeable, but by no means muddy and brings a lot of life to EDM/club music with deep and punchy basslines. Also having owned a TH900 prior to this, the bass is significantly more controlled compared to the TH900.
The major oddity of the tonality was the upper treble region. Cymbal crashes/synths and other high notes are heavily emphasized, bordering on sharp for me. If we eliminate EQ from the mix though, I found the out of the box tonality to be a significant improvement over the LCD-4.
The Empyrean’s staging is interesting and I can see why it appeals to many. The LCD-4 delivers a much wider stage, but the Empyrean seems to pull the vocalist forward on most tracks and creates a sensation of depth that a lot of other headphones lack. I feel this is the strongest point of the headphone’s sound quality, making it easy to enjoy the music over longer sessions with the instruments rarely becoming fatiguing despite the elevated highs.
The one letdown from my experience with this headphone is the resolution. It’s just fine, but I found cheaper alternatives like the LCD-MX4 to deliver a much more comprehensive sense of detail. While the bass is present on the Empyrean, it lacks the punch and impact that the LCD-4 can deliver. It also falls short in the sub-bass extension and detail by a significant margin, but to this date I haven’t heard another headphone that can reach the level of the LCD-4. Aside from that, my main gripe is that while it delivers a decently balanced sound, it feels like it’s been softened slightly across the spectrum – compared to other flagships in this price bracket that is. For some though this could be viewed as a positive if they are sensitive to listening fatigue in longer sessions.
Other Gear Pairings:
LG V60 – Actually hilarious how well this ran off of my phone. The biggest loss was the low end punch initially which made it come across as a little bright and splashy on the high notes. This phone has the Quad-Dac onboard and I set the graphical EQ to roughly match the profile I settled on with my desk setup to compensate. After that I gave a listen to a few more songs, and aside from the issues noted above I found the experience to be very comparable to my desk setup. Stage presentation and imaging were on par with the desktop experience. With the EQ running a slight negative preamp, I was around 75% volume for a decently loud listening level, and max volume being near the limit of what I would listen to for more than a few minutes at a time.
Zen Dac – I’ve kept this around if I plan on traveling a few days and want to bring a set of headphones with me. It was originally going to be for office use until that no longer became a thing for me. Overall a similar experience to running off my V60, again these are incredibly easy to drive and there was very little change in staging and imaging. Slight loss in resolution on the low end though but for a temporary setup it’s more than usable.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, I’m pretty happy I had the chance to try this headphone out. My overall impressions are positive and I think as an entire package it is very compelling on its own, but when viewed in the full scope of what’s available on the market (both secondhand and new) the price/performance relative to its counterparts doesn’t quite hold up.
I found myself comparing this on multiple occasions to my old LCD-MX4. Both retail $3k and are incredibly easy to drive, however MX4s often drop into the $1400 range while these hover around $2k. For comparison I was able to get my current LCD-4 secondhand in that price range, and when excluding price and taking the time to tune a LCD with EQ (it’s pretty much a requirement with them) there is no comparison. Empyreans are an excellent plug and play experience, but with a little effort and the right gear, there are other flagships that deliver a significant “wow” factor that these lack.
Still, the level of craftsmanship and attention to detail that went into these are commendable and other makers should take note. Especially the earpad mechanism, not just in the scope of swapping but also cleaning and easy maintenance. These are headphones that would be what I’d call a safe choice for someone making the dive into higher end headphones. They are not detail monsters, and still have the typical timbre of most planar headphones, but I found it to be pretty inoffensive compared to others I’ve tried. Their biggest strength is that they are easy, approachable, and pretty forgiving of source gear and deliver a consistent experience and for some people, probably is exactly what they are looking for!
Thanks for reading and again thank you to the Headphones team for the opportunity!
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First, I wanted to thank Headphones.com for organizing this tour. It was an unbelievable opportunity to try a legendary and somewhat polarizing pair of headphones, that people seem to love or hate.
Unconscious Bias:
I’ll start with the caveat that I’ll probably write about the things I care about, like sound signature, and may ignore things that I don’t particularly care about, like stage.
And when I exclaim that something sounds “great” and forget to explain why, what I really mean is that the sound is close to my ideal:
- Tight bass as a priority over low bass, but I would ideally like both
- Warm mids
- Smooth treble, with no hint of brightness
- Vocals sound like I’m in the same room as the singer
- Guitars have a texture that I can feel
- My foot taps to music that has rhythm
And if you don’t want to read my rambling review, here were my conclusions.
I hate it… it’s OK… I need to buy one.
Listening Chain:
I used a Schiit Yggdrasil A2 DAC, and my sources were flac files, played through either Foobar (PC connected via USB) or Roon (PI2AES connected via AES).
Amps were, in order of warmth of sound to neutral: Schiit Jot 2, ZMF Pendant, Burson Soloist 3XP, ampsandsound Nautilus. Note that the sound signature of the tube amps is due to the tubes I use. More on this later.
Other headphones used for comparison were Focal Stellia and ZMF Verite Open.
I listened to a variety of music, mostly rock and alternative/indie music, with a smattering of pop and metal.
Non-Audio Stuff:
The headphones are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and quite possible the most comfortable I’ve ever used.
Whoever designed the magnetic pads is a genius. As someone who has struggled with changing pads on my ZMF headphones, the Empy was a dream to use, as I could switch pads in seconds.
The stock cable is crap. It was stiff, microphonic, and it took me a while to straighten it after taking it out of the case. The tour Empy also didn’t come with a balanced cable. Because of this, I decided that it would be easier to use my own cables, since the Empy uses the same mini-XLR connector as my ZMFs.
I used Hart cables for most of my testing, when comparing headphones or trying out different amps, because it was so easy to switch connectors, and it also enabled me to use the same cable for all the headphones. For extended listening sessions, I used a Double Helix silver Molecule Elite cable, only because this is the cable I normally use for my own headphones, and I wanted to reduce the variables.
Pads:
The Empy came with 2 sets of pads: leather and a suede-like microfiber material called Alcantara. I consistently hated the sound of the Alcantara pads, which made the bass sound bloated and introduced a veil over the treble. The rest of the review will describe my impressions of the leather pads. Thank god, because I really don’t want to have to type Alcantara again.
Amp Synergy:
I’ve never met anything as fussy, including our three cats, who consistently turn their noses up at the same food they gobbled down the previous day. The Empy is truly the cat of headphones!
I first tried it on my Nautilus, which I use more than any of my other amps. It’s never occurred to me that the Nautilus could sound anything less than amazing but the Empy just didn’t sound good. Oh dear, why did I sign up for this tour, it’s going to be a slog to get through this.
I then tried the Burson’s SE output, with the same unpleasant sound. However, when switching to the balanced output, which doubles the power, it improved quite a bit. I don’t understand this, because the Empy is very easy to drive, and I’ve never heard such a difference between my Stellia (equally easy to drive) between the SE and balanced output. I was intrigued, but still disheartened, because despite the improvement, the sound had merely gone from mediocre to average.
The Nautilus and Burson are my 2 daily drivers for tubes and solid state respectively, so I was not in a good mood. With a heavy heart, I moved onto my lesser-used amps, starting with the Jot 2.
Joy! The Jot 2 sounded really good with the Empy on both balanced and SE. The balanced output sounded a little better to my ears, but this time it was unsurprising, because each of the Jot 2 outputs has a slightly different sound signature.
Finally, I moved to the Pendant, which had been gathering dust since I bought the Nautilus, until I recently changed the tubes to push it to a warmer presentation (mostly in the mids and upper bass) than the more neutral Nautilus. As much as I enjoyed the Empy on the Jot 2, it really clicked with the Pendant, which I then used for the majority of my listening.
Why did the Empy sound better to me with the Jot 2 and Pendant? No idea! The only thing I can think of is that both of these amps have a little more “flavor” in the sound than the Nautilus and Soloist.
How Did It Sound?
The Empy sounded great with all types of pop and rock music, and didn’t seem to prefer any particular genre over the others.
With the leather pads, the Empy had a warm and very smooth sound. Despite the Pendant using warm-leaning tubes, the Empy didn’t sound too warm to me, and in fact music just sounded more euphonic.
The bass was tighter than with the other pads, but still not as tight as I would have preferred. The mids were slightly recessed, which didn’t bother me, because my Verite has a similar dip in the mids, and when I’m not listening for it, it’s not noticeable to me. The highs were very smooth, maybe even a bit rolled off. But there was a curious emphasis in the upper-treble, particularly on things like cymbals. This was a little distracting at first, and I forgot about it after a while, but it did come back to my attention whenever I was listening to music with a lot of cymbals.
Another curious thing that I noticed about the Empy was the way it was able to stretch the soundstage vertically for compressed “loudness wars” era modern music. This kind of music doesn’t have a lot of dynamic range, meaning that all aspects of the recording have a very similar volume. With my other headphones, I got a wall of sound that was all jumbled up together, but the Empy somehow managed to separate out the highs, mids and lows vertically, which tricked my brain into thinking that the music had a little more room to breathe. I thought this was a useful trick, but I can see others complaining about it being unnatural.
Other than the weird upper treble emphasis (which I was able to ignore for the most part), I found the Empy to be supremely musical. Technically, that means it was very close to the ideal sound that I described above. Emotionally, it meant that I frequently forgot that I was testing it, and just listened to music for hours on end.
I thought that it was tonally pretty close to the slightly warm presentation of my Verite (with Universe pads) but the Empy sounded a little smoother in the mids and highs. The Verite had a much tighter bass.
When switching from the Empy to the Stellia, the latter was a lot less smooth. The Stellia also sounded brighter in comparison, which is not something I’ve ever thought before. I’m guessing that this is because the Stellia’s highs are a little more even than the Empy’s, so you’re hearing more of the treble across the frequency range. And yet despite having more treble overall, the Stellia didn’t have that emphasis on the upper treble that I keep mentioning about the Empy.
Return Of The Stock Cables:
As my time with the Empy drew to a close, I thought that I’d better use the stock cables before I packed it all up, just so that I could say “I used my own cables, but they didn’t sound any different than the stock”.
Well imagine my surprise when the previously enjoyable Empy sounded a little bloated in the bass, with a slight veil in the highs. I double checked that I hadn’t accidentally switched the pads, but confirmed that the leather pads were still attached.
I A-B’d several times between the stock cables and mine, and the difference was consistent. Thinking that my custom cables might be the problem, I pulled out 2 sets of ZMF stock cables, and they sounded consistent with my custom cables, so the Meze cables were definitely the outlier here.
I’ve noticed tiny differences between cables before, but they have always been tiny, nothing as drastic as this. I have no idea if this is how they’re meant to sound, or if they were somehow damaged on the tour. Irrespective of how they sound, I would still recommend immediately replacing them with something less stiff and microphonic. This can be done at very little cost with Hart Audio cables, or you can spend as much money as you want if you prefer audio jewelry that matches the aesthetic of such a beautiful pair of headphones.
Conclusions:
I’ve never been so annoyed by a piece of audio gear than I was by the Empy, because it was so hard to get it get it to sound the way I wanted. And yet when I did find the right synergy, I was in musical heaven.
There are things that the Verite and Stellia do slightly better technically, in my opinion, but at the end of the day, when I wasn’t thinking about frequency curves and various audiophile minutiae, I spent many hours absolutely loving the music I was listening to.
Are they good value? It’s hard to argue that any headphones are good value at this price, and I’m hoping that people only buy things that cost this much with ‘fun money’, and are not taking out loans or using their emergency funds. They represent the same value to me as the upper tier ZMF and Focal headphones and I’ll leave it as that.
Would I recommend them? Given my issues with synergy, I would recommend listening to them first, to see if they’re a good fit.
Would I buy a pair? Yes, they are definitely on my short list.
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Awesome review. They’re definitely different but in a good way imo.
I really enjoyed them off the mz3, which makes me think they can work really well with tubes, depending on the amp obviously. I agree they don’t slam particularly hard but they have just enough and with their deep bass it’s enjoyable.
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Excellent review! You did a great job capturing your little adventure with them.
I’ve also found them to really benefit from gear pairings with more pronounced colorations. And I agree that the Jot 2 is a great pairing with it! That’s currently my favourite SS amp pairing with Empy, despite not being the most technically proficient amp I’ve heard. But the sweet spot is with a synergistic tube amp imo.
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Great review, thanks!
Not to get us off-topic but I’ve seen it said many times now that the Jot 2 has an affinity for planar headphones. I can vouch for it being excellent with my LCD2-2 Classics. I’ve also seen it said that some planars need a good amount of current to drive them properly. Not sure if that or impedance matching are issues with the Empyrean? (Clearly, I’m no EE and have no idea about how these things work, although some day I’d like to learn).
(LOL, about the cats; we have half a dozen flavors of wet food here for our picky fur beasts - as someone with several headphones that have different tunings, I suppose it runs in the family 
)
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Excellent review @PaisleyUnderground. Reviews can sometimes be a bit of a chore. Like you found and pointed out to us it is imperative that you have access to gear capable of running the headphones that you’re reviewing. Luckily you have a fine selection. So was able to manage. But it just goes to show just how important the whole chain is. Thanks for the great review I really enjoyed it.
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Great review. As I have spent the big money on Susvara, various (all) Abyss, the SR09s, LCD 4 etc. I have thought of buying these a million times based just on how good they look. However I never found that my various amps produced a good sound. Now I know I am not alone. Maybe switching the pads, switching the cables and buying a JOT2 is the answer. Boy that seems a lot of work Great helpful review.
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Of course I can’t give you any guarantee, but it seems that a substantial amount of Empy owners agree that the Jot 2 has a nice complementary synergy with Empy. And given its low price, I can somewhat comfortable recommending it for pairing with an Empy. It’s not the best amp you could pair with it of course, but for the price it’s damn good, and a great place to start with Empy imo.
The stock cable is already an ergonomic disaster, so you’ll probably want to find an aftermarket cable for it anyways. And pad swapping? You get both pads in the box, and swapping takes 2 seconds. Just make sure you’ve tried both, as your experience may vary quite a bit with the different pads.
And again, none of this is a guarantee that you’ll love Empy after following these steps. But if you have enough money in reserve to allow for this “experiment”, sure why not. 
I’m definitely interested in hearing your thoughts, should you go through with this.
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I hope you enjoy my take on the Meze Empyrean!
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For those of you that prefer to read vs. YouTube!
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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Meze Audio Empyrean Elite - Flagship Open-Back Planar Magnetic Headphones
For those wondering about the OG Empyrean with the Elite pads, here you go:
OG Empyrean (default pads):
OG Empyrean (Elite pads)
Still a bit to EQ, but… the treble (and the harder parts to EQ) is a LOT smoother. The upper treble no longer contrasts so hard with the mid treble, and this was something that some, myself included, didn’t really like. There’s a slight cost to the 2khz region, but I do think the treble balance is really the advantage of the Elite pads for those wondering.
At the same time… personally I’d just EQ this either way, so it’s really up to you if you think the pad swap is worth going for.
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Well, having cancelled my LCD-5 order as it wasn’t going to arrive in time likely for the long term trip I have coming up. That left me with a bit of a quandry about headphones. I wanted to take something a bit lighter and easy to drive than the Abyss and Susvara, so I ended up picking up a pair of Empyrean locally used. I got what I felt was a fair price, and they meet the needs of
A) Easy as heck to drive
B) Comfy
I was curious about how they would sound, as they have sort of faded into the background of the overall headphone conversation, with the general consensus seeming to be that their build and comfort are epic, but lack a bit in terms of resolution and overall SQ.
I can definitely say the build quality is great, and they are so comfortable.
In terms of sound, I’ll have to report back in a little while after some good listening. I definitely think I’ll need to do a bit tweaking with EQ to get them more in line with my preferences, but I think these will definitely fit the bill for the next few months. I’m looking forward to spending more time with them and getting to know them better.
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Thought I’d check in after some initial listening.
The comfort on the Empyrean is crazy. Comfiest headphone I’ve tried thus far. I read someone else’s comment that “its more comfortable than not wearing headphones at all.” That made me laugh but also summed up what I was thinking. These just feel awesome on your head.
Build quality, and the pad attachment system is also the best I’ve experienced. Abyss feels more “sturdy”, but also weighs more. Trade offs I suppose.
Sound quality without EQ is a bit thick sounding especially in the low mids and vocals were kind of shouty at higher volumes. I’m still working out my preference for an EQ setting, but they seem to take EQ very well.
Very very easy to drive.
I’m really happy with them so far as a very easy to drive and comfy headphone that still sounds good. At their MSRP I don’t think I’d want them as my only headphones especially if they were my only headphones and I was most concerned about SQ above all. For my current use case, combined with the used prices currently, they are much more easy to recommend in that usage situation.
Part of me wonders about the ELITE’s, but I’m not sure it would be worth it. I’ll keep meditating on that one.
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The design is very muted and simple. It’s not a statement piece visually, but I know many people will prefer that for a closed back.
Lol this is exactly me too!
Just took bank loan to get an end-game setup, but ‘accidentally’ bought the Empyreans and haven’t left myself as much funds as I probably need for a decent amp and DAC. I’m also looking for a tube amp. Ideally I’d like to get the Denafrips Ares II and Miltra OTL-8XT, but can’t quite afford both.
Did you get a tube amp in the end? What amp and DAC do you use with your Empyreans?
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