Meze 109 Pro - 40Ohm Dynamic with cellulose/berrylium 50mm drivers

Look at these beauties :O
https://mezeaudio.com/products/109-pro

• Transducer Size: 50mm, angled, a combination of Beryllium-coated polymer, cellulose - carbon fiber composite and copper-zinc alloy.
• Frequency Response: 5Hz - 30KHz
• Sensitivity: 112dB SPI at 1KHz, 1mW
• Impedance: 40 Ω
• Weight: 375 gr (13 oz) without cables
• Ear-Cups Black Walnut Wood

Review with measurments:


I wonder how they would sound from hybrid or OTL amp!

 

Damn that's a nice looking frequency response. They look cool too.
But the combination of Beryllium, polymer, cellulose and carbon fiber is very weird tbh. I'm very interested I have to say.

 

The drivers look interesting. They are like a combination of Denon, Focal and Sennheiser on driver technology. The design and the weight appeal to me as well.

 

I'm not good at reading compensation curves, but is there not a 2-3k dip, similar to ZMF Verite's?

 

Didn't get much of a chance to hear it at CanJam this year, but heard prototypes at other shows. It is quite impressive to see how far Meze has come with the 99 Classic to the 109 Pro. It was kinda drastic hearing the changes in sound plus the improvements in build.

Besides the silhouette, it really is a different headphone with probably one of the best tunings from Meze so far. One anecdotal story I heard from Resolve when he went to Munich High End earlier this year was that he wasn't sure if Antonio Meze saw his reviews on the Meze products or would hold it against him since he wasn't the biggest fan of the Empyrean. But quite the opposite happened, not only did he see the reviews, he acknowledged the reasons why Resolve didn't like it.

Quite nice when we have folks in the industry willing to accept feedback and improve the products as a result.

 

To those who've heard it: going off the graphs the BBC dip looks spectacular, as does the bass to mids transition which I felt was off on the 99 Classics, but the 99s also had a bit of a lower treble hardness that made them unpleasant at higher volumes, kinda like the Campfire Cascade did (based on demos settings etc etc); does the 109 address that, and how's the texture with the fancy new driver? From memory the 99 had a lot of macrodetail but wasn't quite as capable with regards to those textures and nuances across the frequency range.

 

bbc dip, very musical.

 

Preferences and all that, but a bbc dip does not work for me and HP's. I sold off the Verite mostly because of it, and to confirm that it was not just cup resonances/distortion (the VC has a significant distortion spike in this area as well) I experimented with EQ by creating a bbc dip with Clear/Utopia. Of course, perhaps I just have not heard it done right

 

Not to resurrect a dead (dormant?) thread, but does anybody know how this compares to the Focal Clears? (I'd consider them to be in the same price bracket, given the price Headphones.com offer the original Clears now.)

 

109 pro a lot more efficient. Scales with dedicated amplification. Beyer highs without the pierce with Tesla driver like dynamics and BBC dip, makes mids crispy thin sounding. Warm but clean punchy bass, mid bass. V shaped. Good staging width and layering but getting the 3 blob, left, middle, right feeling.

Ah, the good ol' Clear OG. These need power to sing. Feels less clear the moment one switches between the two, lol ;-) The 109 pro are clearly (ups...) less balanced. The Clear are the kind of can where nothing hits you, but everything hits you. Sub bass, bass, mid bass are balanced, extended and articulated with a touch of warmth and fuzziness, textured. Feels warmer and more textured throughout the mids. Kind of an inverse to the 109 pro in mid treble to treble transition and treble extension. Think more texture and warmth in the mids and less sparkle in the highs. Staging taller, fuzzier, deeper, less wide at first when A/B-ing, but much deeper and more involving layering.

Drawing conclusions... not only is the Clear more balanced, tonality wise, but it extends more, has actual TOTL texture retrieval, layering, staging, depth... I've the OG Utopia too, Clear with heavily worn pads are more transcendental, enjoyable... need to try Utopia with heavily worn Clear pads I guess...

'cos life is too short... for a desktop TOTL endgame... get the Clear OG... and... never look back...

 

Been listening some more to these. Pretty nice technicalities across the band. These are happy playing loud, behave great across the spectrum, to my ears. Impressed how easily involving these are. Presentation still feels in between on-ear and full size headphones. The highs are nice, present and catchy, popping above the rest. Could be really good as music + voice comm application. Easy listening while working. Perhaps not really the relaxing kind of sound, keeps one awake.

 

I have had some luck lately moving headphones. I sold three sets in the last few weeks and decided to treat myself to another set.
Yesterday I bought a set of used Meze 109 Pro's. I was looking at five or six different headphones, but settled on these. Hopefully it was the right choice.

It came down to these or the ETA 02's. While 02's seem like a nice headphone, I felt they would be a hard sell if I didn't like them.
Took a couple of months to move the Nectar Bee's.

Most headphone buyers have no idea who Nectar, ETA or even Modhouse are.

Looking forward to adding these to the collection. Very curious about all the treble talk. At least they will be already broken in.

 

Have to concede it was something of a knee jerk response relative to the rest of the range. I'm definitely not keen on Harman upper mids, but the warmer tilt of the lower end relative to how the 99 Classic did things (and I did find the 99s "hard" sounding) is encouraging. Still haven't gotten ears on these, but I'm keen to demo at least.

 

Got my 109's today. I was pretty leery of trying them out. The really long Head-Fi thread had a Lot of horrible things to say about them. I have never seen that much negativity in a mainstream thread. I was going to try to keep an open mind.

Anyway, I started off with my test list and my initial reactions are:

1) The mids are Awesome! Not recessed at all to me. Male vocals, female vocals, guitars, etc. All sounded great.

2) The bass is nice. Not recessed, but not pounding either. Better than Grado, but not up to Focal for me.

3) On my test tracks, I had no problem with treble, but I have not tried any jazz yet. I have just turned on Keith Jarrett and will do this for about an hour until the ball game comes on.

I had heard horror stories but after my very brief introduction, I think these will be a nice addition to my growing little Mid-Fi collection.

 

Does anyone have experience listening to both the 109 Pro and JAR600? I'd be curious about how they compare in terms of imaging, staging, and treble resolution