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You know, there's a lot of premium headphones out there that aren't really made of what I think are premium materials.

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A lot of plastic, a lot of like, you know, aluminum, nothing special.

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But what makes these Metses headphones so G-Dang cool to me

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is that they're made of actual wood. Let's just look at that.

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Just, just, it's so beautiful. It's so nice.

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Romanian audio legends Mese have sponsored us today

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to talk about their 99 classics. And some of you in the headphone world,

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you might be thinking, Hey, I'm Seba. And you're right. These aren't exactly new, but that isn't a bad thing.

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Good sound stays good for life. But Mese audio has a pretty good reputation

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for making high quality headphones. Their 99 classics sit far more in their mainstream line

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than some of their really, really high-end things like their Imperian headphones,

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which I think can cost quite a pretty penny. So these can be like a great introduction

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if you're somebody who's interested in getting into more of the hobbyist headphone space and want something that's gonna look classy

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and also like quite a firm case. You can really, too much.

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These are a traditional wired headphone. There's no batteries. There's no wireless or Bluetooth connections.

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So if you're looking for something that's maybe a better commuter headphone, this might not be it,

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but they're still actually quite compact. And you could totally take them in this carrying case,

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but these aren't like super travel-focused despite their size. Let's talk about this mess I've made.

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In the box, we get some stickers, a thank you from Antonio Mese himself.

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Oh, that's neat. So since this is actual wood, all of the patterns are gonna be unique.

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So this is distinct to you only. And in this little pouch here, we have an optional cable you can buy from Mese

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with a 4.4 millimeter balanced connection. And then in here, you have long cables, too.

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We have a three meter braided cable that goes to a 3.5 millimeter jack.

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And we have a shorter travel-focused cable that actually has an inline microphone and controller

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that does, as far as I know, play and pause. Maybe a double click will skip.

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Maybe a triple click will go back. One tap to play pause or answer and hang up from a call,

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two taps to skip, three taps to go back.

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I was right. I kind of impartial to this really nice braided cable

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compared to the fabric ones, but I don't have a balanced output with me today.

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How's the memory on it? And look at that, there's like no cable memory. That's a sign of a high quality cable.

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Is that even though it was wrapped up and shipped across the country like that, it's basically a straight line now.

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There's no curls or curves in it. As you can see with these cables,

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they have a little bit more memory. Like, see how that curls back up?

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That'll come out probably with wear, usually. Ow, did I just burn myself on that?

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Holy crap. Holy crap. Also in that pouch, you got a quarter inch adapter

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and an airplane adapter. These are becoming more and more rare.

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Collectibles now. I kind of wonder why they give you the two pouches.

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I guess maybe this is a little bit nicer than taking this thing, but if you're gonna be taking these things

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and you're gonna take this, so you might as well just fit this in here.

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I don't know. Oh, come on.

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Meze. Burnin is the process for exercising new audio equipment.

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The main purpose of Burnin is to process is to loosen the diaphragm of a newly crafted headphone

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and to stress the headphone driver. Most audio files agree that sound quality

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will be noticeably improved after Burnin. The 99 classics require 40 hours of Burnin time

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to reach their optimal performing state, but I have some thoughts about Burnin. One, there is pretty much no evidence out there

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that suggests that Burnin is a noticeable effect

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or is required on pretty much any headphone. Two, if it is required,

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why aren't they doing that themselves before they send this off to me? Why wouldn't they just blast these with audio for 40 hours

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and then send them to me? Like, why would they send me something that doesn't sound good when I buy it?

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That would increase the odds of me being like, I don't like these, I'm going to return them.

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So just make them sound good when I get them. Don't try to explain to me in your manual.

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It's just in here on audio file. Yeah, oh yeah, sorry. Yeah, I guess, I guess I'm not, well.

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No, it means I'm not. Most audio files agree that sound quality will be noticeably improved after Burnin.

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Yeah, that's kind of some fluff

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that I don't really appreciate and we should let people know that

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that's not really a thing. But something I do like them including is a frequency response graph.

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But you have to take this with a grain of salt because it doesn't actually say what this was measured on. So it's like, you can't really compare it to anything

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because you don't know what they used. They have dynamic neodymium slash mylar 40 millimeter drivers.

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The frequency response is 15 hertz to 25 kilohertz. The sensitivity is 103 dB at an impedance of 32 ohms,

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which means that you can expect these to be pretty easy to drive with anything,

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laptop, phone, you should be set. Man, I love the feeling and the polish

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on this walnut wood. It's really nice.

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Meze also points out that all of the wood used for these are from trees at the end of their life cycle,

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which is neat. And replacement serviceability stands true

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for the rest of this thing. We got only nuts and bolts in here.

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There's no glue holding anything together so you can fully take them apart.

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The build quality is pretty solid. The steel headband is like,

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despite its thinness is very, very rigid. Maybe if you really went for it, you could bend it,

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but I wouldn't call these quite delicate. The headband itself is made of polyurethane leather,

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so plastic leather. It's always suspension type headbands that I find are really comfortable,

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although I do worry with the weight. Oh no, that's okay.

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That's pretty good. What they've avoided, they've avoided an issue that some headphones have is that

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if they're not heavy enough and their headband is a little too tight, they start to like pull up on your ears

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as you listen to them. Then you find that like your headphones kind of pushing your lobes

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and no one wants their lobes pushed. Let's be real. The ear cups are mounted on like a ball joint kind of thing.

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You have a very small amount of swivel and tilt and then height adjustment is done by the elastic headband.

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Noise isolation sounds pretty good. In terms of comfort, these cups I find are deep enough for my ears.

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If you have ears that stick out more, you might find that they're not quite deep enough

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and you're hitting a pretty hard plastic kind of inner housing

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and enough space for most ears. They're pretty spacious ear cups.

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So I wouldn't be too worried about that. I think that these are actually really comfortable.

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The tension on the band up here is at a really great level that even if you kind of wiggle,

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the ear cups don't climb up. They stay seated.

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They're not clamping too hard. They feel very luxe.

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Hey, you guys want to like talk to me right now? Okay, the sound. They're not the most isolating closeback headphones

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I've heard. Like talk to me, Andrew.

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I didn't say, I said talk to me, Andrew.

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Yeah, that's what I wanted to do. Okay. Listen, guys, we're all friends here, right?

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Well, that's what I wanted to do. Come on. I'm nice.

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I guess now the next thing to do is to take a listen.

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It's not that it's a bad song.

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So I'm tired of it.

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They're so loud. They aren't wrong.

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It do get loud. They are easy to drive.

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I will say that when you get to the really loud volumes that you probably never will be or should be listening to.

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The sound gets a little compressed, but again, you really should never be playing these that loud.

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You should now be listening to me on the microphone, including the 99 Classic by Meze Audio.

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How does it sound? Can you hear my typing on my keyboard?

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Can you? Can you? Really, it's kind of more of a value add

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than it is supposed to be like a dedicated communication microphone.

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Meze positions this as a fun headphone.

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And you know what? They ain't wrong. They have a nice boost in the bass region that makes things kind of, you know,

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thump a little bit more. And they're not like overly brittle or shrill.

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And they're not like overly sparkling or sibilant in the high end.

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Though I wouldn't say that their treble is exactly perfect. There's some weird bumps up there,

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but you could either EQ that out easily or maybe it's just an acquired taste that I don't have.

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Overall, I think these things sound pretty okay. And if you know other reviewers who like them

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as they sound signature and you agree with them on a lot of things, then go with them.

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But that's just me. What does Labs say? If we take a look at the frequency response graph

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provided by Labs, we can see that yes, there is indeed that bass bump

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that happens right around the 200 Hertz region. The nice part is that there's this dip at 300 Hertz

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that prevents the bass from becoming like too muddy. As I said, that makes kind of a boomy, warmer sound.

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And if we go through the mids, things seem pretty chill with a little bit of a dip at one killers.

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And then at the upper mids in three and a half, oh, just south of four kilohertz,

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there's that big kind of treble dip, which I think is part of where I found

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that kind of weirdness in terms of presence. And then we jump up to a bit of an overemphasized area

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in the five kilohertz to nine kilohertz region, at least compared to our target,

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which could make things sound maybe a little sibilant. I didn't find it to be too obnoxious for me.

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Now, the important thing to note is just because something deviates from our target, doesn't mean that they sound bad.

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Our target is meant to show what would sound good to maybe 65% of the population.

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That leaves a whole lot of people who might not be satisfied by a headphone

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that matches our target. Also, like, what a boring world we'd live in

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if every headphone sounded the same. This would be boring to me.

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They have passive noise isolation that is pretty typical of any close-back headphones.

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You know, bass noises, they don't get really canceled out. Bass noises and things below like kind of

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the 1000 kilohertz region don't really get attenuated very much.

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You usually need active noise cancellation to deal with those kinds of frequencies.

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It's pretty par for the course. And the fact that these aren't like a super tight clamping headphone or anything like that

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means that these are not the most isolating,

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but, you know, they're close-backs. So you're still gonna be able to block out a few things,

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especially once you put on some music. And for the mic, the inline microphone,

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which dangles on the left side of the user's head, our lab is yet to get its anechoic chamber.

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So you can see that below 80 hertz, our AC unit in our building came on

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and that kind of threw off the results, so ignore that. For the most part, the mic is very, very flat

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all the way up to about 1500 hertz.

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After the, around the 1500 hertz region, the microphone kind of starts to dip.

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That's gonna make you sound a little muffled. A lot of important speech sounds like T's, F's, P's,

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a lot of the consonants and stuff exist in that space. You're not gonna be unintelligible,

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but maybe just a little muffled. At the end of the day, I think that the meses,

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they're a nice luxury feeling pair of headphones.

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They look so good and they sound pretty great too.

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And they're gonna cost you about $309. But for the next two weeks,

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Mese is hooking our audience up with a special deal. It's easy, just click the link in the description

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and use the code shortcircuit20 at checkout. You'll save 20% on your purchase of the 99 classics

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in either walnut silver, which we just talked about, or walnut gold, the better color.

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Plus, that code will also get you free shipping on your new pair of 99 classics.

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Thanks for watching this video. If you liked it, well, there's a lot more where these came from,

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so why don't you hit that subscribe button and then check out future videos.

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And if you didn't like it, tell your enemies.