“As you are a pretty young man, how did you come to the idea to produce headphones?” – one of the opening questions in an interview for Pult.ru, the largest online store for Hi-Fi & High End-technology in Russia.
“I really wanted to make some headphones the way I thought they should be made” – it’s Antonio Meze’s simple answer leading to the development of not so simple headphones.
Vlad Babakin, representing Blade, Meze’s distributor in Russia, helped translate a series of questions asked by the moderator from Pult.ru. They have started a specialized online show, streaming live on YouTube, on topics of interest for the Russian audiophile community. They invite representatives from all the major names in the audiophile world, if you are curious please do check out Pult's Youtube channel.
In the honest, straightforward Russian manner, all the easy and hard to answer questions rolled out one after another. They dived deep into Meze’s beginnings, how is Meze doing now, how is Meze’s production organized, who is Meze’s partner in Ukraine (Rinaro Isodynamics) for the Empyrean and the question we also keep on asking ourselves inside the team every so often: “do you have a plan to produce full-size wireless headphones?”. And yes, the answer is still the same “Not…yet”. As a small company, we are not geared to create a product for the consumer market and for large volumes. Considering the sound quality expectations for HiFi audio products, wireless technology is not quite there yet. Meze Audio’s product roadmap includes all wired headphones for the near future.
How about balanced armature headphones? How about single dynamic driver headphones? Any plans for 99 Classics with MMCX connectors? Well, stay tuned, there are headphones in development, with dynamic drivers and with planar magnetic technology! No MMCX for 99s though.
The interview goes on with Antonio sharing his view on the music listening experience with headphones and, at request, his own choice of audio equipment in his family home, audio companies he follows and admires and his recommendations on how to choose your first headphone.
We speak many different languages in the audiophile community, yet the language of music seems to bring us all together. We enjoy creating headphones, and we enjoy listening to audio gear made by our competitors as well. It has been a pleasure connecting with our distribution partners and with the audiophile community from Russia. That being said, we won’t spoil the conversation with more wording on the topic and leave you to watch the interview below.
