Mezel'tov. It's Romanian for congratulations. Those are due as you now know. This brief written add-on means to fill in gaps I left in the podcast because I'd prepared no music samples on which to pin sonic comments. For my ears built by Germans in 1962—an excellent year I'm told, leading my horoscope to factor, yes, six planets in Aquarius—the 109 was brilliant at extricating the fine tip work on this Aytac Dogan track which many speakers miss or barely resolve. Pay attention to 1'30" onward, then again the 3'00" resumé. Incidentally, Aytac is the qanun player for Turkey's brilliant Taksim Trio for more music well worth checking out. Whilst the 109 looks all curvaceous and polished with sound to match, it does have the requisite teeth to lay bare very fine treble action. Baby Draculas. No blood sucking, just a tight feel on even subliminal pulses that course tastily inside HF veins. Managing such reveals without presenting as bright or forward is one of the 109 voicing's great tricks.
On Smadj's "Elle" with Sylvain Barou on ebony traverse flute, pay attention to the bass beats starting at 0'41" whence the earlier beats gain reinforcement an octave lower. The 109 unearthed that extra mass which rises minimally past each main hit with excellent weight. That's an example for the design's slight mid/upper bass emphasis which here generated impressive shove and meaty impact.
On the next stompin' cut from Mychael Danna's soundtrack for the Mira Neir classic KamaSutra, zero in once more on 0'41" and how from 1'05" on the walking bass has gained an extra octave of pounding action below.
Most speakers barely recover that sub bass; certainly not at full power. Because the 109's mid/upper bass is slightly elevated, 1st-octave SPL sit a bit lower. "Gold Dust Bacchanalia" demonstrates this; but also how the 109 reach very low regardless.
Another very effective voicing trick is a subtly subdued presence/lower-treble response. Pay attention to the descending tremolo motif of the violins right at the beginning, later again during the bridge. The close-mic'd upper violin harmonics are very explicit. They can potentially touch a nerve and over my Raal-Requisite ribbon earspeakers do yet the 109's deliberate deviation from 'textbook linearity' avoids any wincing. This cut also celebrates the 109's excellent recovery of transients which here splatter as percussive accents all over a very well-defined soundstage. Higher treble intelligibility equals more precise image localizations.
Now you have four-square music samples to flesh out the podcast review where I said that compared to the Mark Levinson N°5909 John and I had just reviewed previously, the 109 diverges from the Harman curve. Its mid/upper bass so roughly 80Hz to 200Hz present as up relative to sub bass, the 2-3kHz presence region and lower treble down yet the air/brilliance region up again. As I also said, the upshot of this voicing is being warm but not dull, exciting but not exhausting. Very crafty indeed.
On Cen.Grand Silver Fox preceded by Sonnet Pasithea as converter with remote-controlled variable reference voltage so amp at 0.0dB.
It's why the Meze 109 Pro are my new favorite headphones in the sub €2K field I've surveyed. They're also comfy as sin.
With COS Engineering H1 preceded by Soundaware D300Pro SD card transport.
Mezel'tov indeed!
