When I first received the Meze 73′s, I immediately started cranking music through them starting with Heavy Metal, Classic Rock, then onward to Jazz and Classical Music to get an overall feel for how these headphones sounded compared to my current flavors of headphones, which consists of AKG K 271 mkII’s, K240′s, K121, Shure SRH 840′s, V-moda CrossFade LP, Audio-Technica ATH-M50 and the Sennheiser HD 558 of which I use in both recording and playback sessions in my studio. The 73’s are made of handcrafted Ebony wood and no two are identical due to this fact. The speakers consist of 50mm drivers and the phones have nice padded ear cups for comfort that are well made and do not feel sticky or restricting. The detachable TPE cables connect individually to each side of the phones with another 3.5mm plug that goes to your sound source. You can use the 3.5mm plug with your iPhone or other media devices.

• Frequency Response: 18hz-22Khz
• Speaker Size: 50mm
• Sensitivity: 107+/-3dB at 1KHz, 1mW
• Impedance: 40 Ohm
• R&L Balance: <3dB*50Hz-6KHz, 1mW
• Detachable Cable
• Plug: 3.5MM

Some people swear by burning in a headset and recently I have been implementing this aspect of my testing phase, so we will talk about first the initial sound and then the burn in sound.  Before the burn in I must confess the Meze 73’s did not sound bad at all and in fact many of the Pop and Jazz songs sounded pretty well balanced, warm and Metal sounded loud and clear. I then plugged the headphones into my headphone amp and played a variety of sounds for over 24 hours straight at the highest volume the Meze 73’s could handle. This means having music blaring through the cans at all hours of the night and wee morning as well, which unless you have a big house you will either have to just deal, or use a pillow and try to damper the sound.

Now I will try my best to impart in words what my ears have been hearing and how the Meze 73’s fit as far as sound goes. To me there are bass heavy, treble heavy and muddy sounding types of headphones and the sound depends on what applications you could or would use them for. The Meze 73’s have a very clean and clear sound with treble that pierces the ears if turned up too much and bass response that is not over prominent, but still has enough presence so you know its there.  For those looking for earth shattering bass these are not for you as Hip Hop and Rap, although sounding clear, my friends who are into that genre claimed the sound was too pretty for them on the Meze 73’s. That to me was not an insult in any way as the 73’s do have a very pretty sound character to them as they are very clear and clarity is the key word I would use to describe them in the broad sense. Some of the headphones that I have tested had a significant character change in the sound after a 24 hour burn-in, but the Meze 73’s already had a very well rounded sound right out of the box and although I could hear a slight change in the color of the sound I do not feel that these headphones actually require a burn-in period to sound great.

I spent quite a few days comparing these against others, as well as having friends also do the sound testing to get a balanced opinion on how they sounded by other people’s ears.  For studio monitoring while recording vocals, I was not too happy with the Meze 73s as I could still essentially hear a lot of background noise that distracted me from what I was doing as they do not have cups that cover my ears or are made for noise cancellation only passive noise isolation. For listening to any type of music the Meze 73’s sound really great and the only thing is the type of phones you like that may make them differentiate from others. The one thing that I did not really like were the included cables as to me they were just so light, as if I might just accidently break them, but for others this may be a positive thing as like I said they are very light.  At the end of the day I cannot really say anything bad about the Meze 73’s as they did sound great and never failed at high volumes like others. Being that the headphones cups are made of ebony wood (no two are identical) these are fashion statements as well as being a very nice set of cans to listen to your music and multimedia with. The Meze 73’s cost around $240.00, which for some will be way to pricey, but for those who want a one-of-a-kind set of kick ass headphones these are surely worth taking a gamble on and if you have a real headphone amp the clarity only gets better.

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