You know, there's a lot of premium headphones out there that aren't really made of what I think are premium materials.
A lot of plastic, a lot of like, you know, aluminum, nothing special.
But what makes these Metses headphones so G-Dang cool to me
is that they're made of actual wood. Let's just look at that.
Just, just, it's so beautiful. It's so nice.
Romanian audio legends Mese have sponsored us today
to talk about their 99 classics. And some of you in the headphone world,
you might be thinking, Hey, I'm Seba. And you're right. These aren't exactly new, but that isn't a bad thing.
Good sound stays good for life. But Mese audio has a pretty good reputation
for making high quality headphones. Their 99 classics sit far more in their mainstream line
than some of their really, really high-end things like their Imperian headphones,
which I think can cost quite a pretty penny. So these can be like a great introduction
if you're somebody who's interested in getting into more of the hobbyist headphone space and want something that's gonna look classy
and also like quite a firm case. You can really, too much.
These are a traditional wired headphone. There's no batteries. There's no wireless or Bluetooth connections.
So if you're looking for something that's maybe a better commuter headphone, this might not be it,
but they're still actually quite compact. And you could totally take them in this carrying case,
but these aren't like super travel-focused despite their size. Let's talk about this mess I've made.
In the box, we get some stickers, a thank you from Antonio Mese himself.
Oh, that's neat. So since this is actual wood, all of the patterns are gonna be unique.
So this is distinct to you only. And in this little pouch here, we have an optional cable you can buy from Mese
with a 4.4 millimeter balanced connection. And then in here, you have long cables, too.
We have a three meter braided cable that goes to a 3.5 millimeter jack.
And we have a shorter travel-focused cable that actually has an inline microphone and controller
that does, as far as I know, play and pause. Maybe a double click will skip.
Maybe a triple click will go back. One tap to play pause or answer and hang up from a call,
two taps to skip, three taps to go back.
I was right. I kind of impartial to this really nice braided cable
compared to the fabric ones, but I don't have a balanced output with me today.
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.
Is that even though it was wrapped up and shipped across the country like that, it's basically a straight line now.
There's no curls or curves in it. As you can see with these cables,
they have a little bit more memory. Like, see how that curls back up?
That'll come out probably with wear, usually. Ow, did I just burn myself on that?
Holy crap. Holy crap. Also in that pouch, you got a quarter inch adapter
and an airplane adapter. These are becoming more and more rare.
Collectibles now. I kind of wonder why they give you the two pouches.
I guess maybe this is a little bit nicer than taking this thing, but if you're gonna be taking these things
and you're gonna take this, so you might as well just fit this in here.
I don't know. Oh, come on.
Meze. Burnin is the process for exercising new audio equipment.
The main purpose of Burnin is to process is to loosen the diaphragm of a newly crafted headphone
and to stress the headphone driver. Most audio files agree that sound quality
will be noticeably improved after Burnin. The 99 classics require 40 hours of Burnin time
to reach their optimal performing state, but I have some thoughts about Burnin. One, there is pretty much no evidence out there
that suggests that Burnin is a noticeable effect
or is required on pretty much any headphone. Two, if it is required,
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
and then send them to me? Like, why would they send me something that doesn't sound good when I buy it?
That would increase the odds of me being like, I don't like these, I'm going to return them.
So just make them sound good when I get them. Don't try to explain to me in your manual.
It's just in here on audio file. Yeah, oh yeah, sorry. Yeah, I guess, I guess I'm not, well.
No, it means I'm not. Most audio files agree that sound quality will be noticeably improved after Burnin.
Yeah, that's kind of some fluff
that I don't really appreciate and we should let people know that
that's not really a thing. But something I do like them including is a frequency response graph.
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
because you don't know what they used. They have dynamic neodymium slash mylar 40 millimeter drivers.
The frequency response is 15 hertz to 25 kilohertz. The sensitivity is 103 dB at an impedance of 32 ohms,
which means that you can expect these to be pretty easy to drive with anything,
laptop, phone, you should be set. Man, I love the feeling and the polish
on this walnut wood. It's really nice.
Meze also points out that all of the wood used for these are from trees at the end of their life cycle,
which is neat. And replacement serviceability stands true
for the rest of this thing. We got only nuts and bolts in here.
There's no glue holding anything together so you can fully take them apart.
The build quality is pretty solid. The steel headband is like,
despite its thinness is very, very rigid. Maybe if you really went for it, you could bend it,
but I wouldn't call these quite delicate. The headband itself is made of polyurethane leather,
so plastic leather. It's always suspension type headbands that I find are really comfortable,
although I do worry with the weight. Oh no, that's okay.
That's pretty good. What they've avoided, they've avoided an issue that some headphones have is that
if they're not heavy enough and their headband is a little too tight, they start to like pull up on your ears
as you listen to them. Then you find that like your headphones kind of pushing your lobes
and no one wants their lobes pushed. Let's be real. The ear cups are mounted on like a ball joint kind of thing.
You have a very small amount of swivel and tilt and then height adjustment is done by the elastic headband.
Noise isolation sounds pretty good. In terms of comfort, these cups I find are deep enough for my ears.
If you have ears that stick out more, you might find that they're not quite deep enough
and you're hitting a pretty hard plastic kind of inner housing
and enough space for most ears. They're pretty spacious ear cups.
So I wouldn't be too worried about that. I think that these are actually really comfortable.
The tension on the band up here is at a really great level that even if you kind of wiggle,
the ear cups don't climb up. They stay seated.
They're not clamping too hard. They feel very luxe.
Hey, you guys want to like talk to me right now? Okay, the sound. They're not the most isolating closeback headphones
I've heard. Like talk to me, Andrew.
I didn't say, I said talk to me, Andrew.
Yeah, that's what I wanted to do. Okay. Listen, guys, we're all friends here, right?
Well, that's what I wanted to do. Come on. I'm nice.
I guess now the next thing to do is to take a listen.
It's not that it's a bad song.
So I'm tired of it.
They're so loud. They aren't wrong.
It do get loud. They are easy to drive.
I will say that when you get to the really loud volumes that you probably never will be or should be listening to.
The sound gets a little compressed, but again, you really should never be playing these that loud.
You should now be listening to me on the microphone, including the 99 Classic by Meze Audio.
How does it sound? Can you hear my typing on my keyboard?
Can you? Can you? Really, it's kind of more of a value add
than it is supposed to be like a dedicated communication microphone.
Meze positions this as a fun headphone.
And you know what? They ain't wrong. They have a nice boost in the bass region that makes things kind of, you know,
thump a little bit more. And they're not like overly brittle or shrill.
And they're not like overly sparkling or sibilant in the high end.
Though I wouldn't say that their treble is exactly perfect. There's some weird bumps up there,
but you could either EQ that out easily or maybe it's just an acquired taste that I don't have.
Overall, I think these things sound pretty okay. And if you know other reviewers who like them
as they sound signature and you agree with them on a lot of things, then go with them.
But that's just me. What does Labs say? If we take a look at the frequency response graph
provided by Labs, we can see that yes, there is indeed that bass bump
that happens right around the 200 Hertz region. The nice part is that there's this dip at 300 Hertz
that prevents the bass from becoming like too muddy. As I said, that makes kind of a boomy, warmer sound.
And if we go through the mids, things seem pretty chill with a little bit of a dip at one killers.
And then at the upper mids in three and a half, oh, just south of four kilohertz,
there's that big kind of treble dip, which I think is part of where I found
that kind of weirdness in terms of presence. And then we jump up to a bit of an overemphasized area
in the five kilohertz to nine kilohertz region, at least compared to our target,
which could make things sound maybe a little sibilant. I didn't find it to be too obnoxious for me.
Now, the important thing to note is just because something deviates from our target, doesn't mean that they sound bad.
Our target is meant to show what would sound good to maybe 65% of the population.
That leaves a whole lot of people who might not be satisfied by a headphone
that matches our target. Also, like, what a boring world we'd live in
if every headphone sounded the same. This would be boring to me.
They have passive noise isolation that is pretty typical of any close-back headphones.
You know, bass noises, they don't get really canceled out. Bass noises and things below like kind of
the 1000 kilohertz region don't really get attenuated very much.
You usually need active noise cancellation to deal with those kinds of frequencies.
It's pretty par for the course. And the fact that these aren't like a super tight clamping headphone or anything like that
means that these are not the most isolating,
but, you know, they're close-backs. So you're still gonna be able to block out a few things,
especially once you put on some music. And for the mic, the inline microphone,
which dangles on the left side of the user's head, our lab is yet to get its anechoic chamber.
So you can see that below 80 hertz, our AC unit in our building came on
and that kind of threw off the results, so ignore that. For the most part, the mic is very, very flat
all the way up to about 1500 hertz.
After the, around the 1500 hertz region, the microphone kind of starts to dip.
That's gonna make you sound a little muffled. A lot of important speech sounds like T's, F's, P's,
a lot of the consonants and stuff exist in that space. You're not gonna be unintelligible,
but maybe just a little muffled. At the end of the day, I think that the meses,
they're a nice luxury feeling pair of headphones.
They look so good and they sound pretty great too.
And they're gonna cost you about $309. But for the next two weeks,
Mese is hooking our audience up with a special deal. It's easy, just click the link in the description
and use the code shortcircuit20 at checkout. You'll save 20% on your purchase of the 99 classics
in either walnut silver, which we just talked about, or walnut gold, the better color.
Plus, that code will also get you free shipping on your new pair of 99 classics.
Thanks for watching this video. If you liked it, well, there's a lot more where these came from,
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And if you didn't like it, tell your enemies.