Sealed & delivered? Unless they're open baffles like AKG's radical K1000 of yore, the Mysphere 3.2 successor or Raal-Requisite's true-ribbon SR1a/b, the ear cushions of circumaural headphones create miniature rooms on our skull. Just like regular speakers in a room, the shape, thickness and relative lossiness of on-ear walls has a big influence on our sound. Once we seal the ear cup's back to avoid leaking sound to others or shield ourselves from outside noise, trapped air compresses. We create even more reflections and resonances. Those cause phase shift and sound leakage through the driver membrane. They can also cause hot ears and undue pressurization. How to deal with all the side effects of energizing air trapped in a very confined space that's direct-coupled to our ear is every closed can's nightmare. In sonic terms, it tosses and turns on how to minimize congestion and faux warmth which is really the ringing of resonances and their bloat.

On the sealed ledger's asset side sit potential bass power and reach. Just as moving a speaker outdoors cuts its bass which magically reappears back in a room, so does sealing a headphone invoke room gain. It's when each reflection adds itself to the direct sound to make it louder, albeit delayed in time. 'Free' bass is any sealed headphone's smiling selfie. It's only free of course if it comes without undesirable side effects. But it's certainly true that achieving loud low dynamically exuberant bass can get easier when we seal off a headphone's back. Now we must energize less air. That Rinaro and Meze know all about these challenges we appreciate from their tiny hole in the wall bleeding off pressure plus the QWRM and Phase-X™ antidotes. Would Meze be willing to explain how the two buzzwords work? Money pinchers amongst us—who isn't one?—appreciate that replacing a frame very slowly machined from solid aluminium with polymer and an elaborately filigreed grill with solid wood shave off serious machine time so costs versus Meze's big guns. That we don't sacrifice industrial design and finishing is part of Antonio Meze being boss. As a bona fide designer, he wouldn't put his own name on anything not stylishly handsome or quality. At $2K, such considerations figure. From the formal photos Liric 2 certainly looked to deliver. For more, I'd have to get hands and ears on. Thankfully a sample dispatched right away unlike the Empyrean II which by then I'd waited on for more than 2 months. That was due to supply-chain delays of its drivers. With Rinaro operating out of the Ukraine, it seemed a minor miracle that any of their drivers got made and out at all.

Inverted priorities? Meze's chunky shorter 4.4mm braided cable felt appropriately premium, the long 3.5mm cable cheap. What's more, the latter proved to be a master of tangling up like a reactive viper. It appears that Meze view Liric II's primary stomping grounds as upscale mobile. Stationary users seem more of an afterthought. Otherwise our sort too would get a premium leash; and terminated 6.3mm at that. Does it mean today's out'n'about tune slinger doesn't think twice about wearing a €2'000 pair of luxuriously finished headphones in the sun, gym or on the rail to work? If so, I'm clearly out of step with the times. Due apologies for my salty attitude. Liric II itself was smaller than expected, its pad opening larger. This is a super-tidy build with 360° rotation off the tight height posts and cleanly bolted attachments for easy replacement. The pre-tensioned headband sports four padded ridges as contact patch whilst deliberately floating the centre portion to avoid the most sensitive area of the skull. The magnetic pads come off like a dream. Such attention to detail makes my vintage Audeze LCD-XC and even Final D8000 feel a bit Flintstone by contrast. When it comes to high style and deluxe finishing, Meze have set new standards from when those competitors were new.

To clock some come-on-song mileage, I plugged the Liric II into my FiiO R7. In the 3rd of five gain settings, ~90-100 of 120 hit my usual SPL. Set to play through my 1TB SD card, I put the display to sleep and went about my day in the downstairs office. I'd return there soon enough to play off the premium Enleum AMP-23R and iFi iDSD Pro Signature.

Finally I'd move into the main system with two combos: Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe into the matching Silver Fox amp; or Denafrips Terminator Plus into Vinnie Rossi L2 Signature with WE 300B into Kinki Studio THR-1. For those amps I'd use a premium XLR4 cable from Poland's Forza AudioWorks.