LUXURY
Well, when you’re talking about something as important as music, it’s worth stretching your headphones budget all the way to snapping point…
MEZE AUDIO EMPYREAN II
For the last dozen years or so, Meze Audio has been making high-achieving headphones that seem to pay no attention to what anyone else is doing. And the most high-achieving, pay-no-attentioning of the lot are these, the second gen of the Empyrean over-ears.
There’s more to delivering ‘luxury’ headphones than using the most expensive materials available and rolling them in glitter, of course. Not every brand with high-end aspirations understands this, but Meze most definitely does. So not only do the Empyrean IIs make use of high-grade leather, CMC-milled aluminium, fibreglass-infused ABS and other such exoticism; not only do they arrive with a choice of earpads designed to offer both comfort and variation in sonic signature; and not only do you get to select between 10 (count ’em!) different types of cable; but they sound… well, absolutely bloody glorious.