Hi all!
This review is going to be a bit unusual, since I haven’t been able to properly test the sound characteristics of the phones. More on that below, but please take the sound comments with a good deal of salt.
I promised this review will be posted last weekend, but my camera’s card broke and the replacement arrived Monday. Moreover, some personal circumstances just prevented me to be in the right mood to release. The text was already written, so I decided to post it now.
My next review will be about the Meelec A151, the first single armature model from Meelec, and will be the last review for the moment, as I’ve spent more time trying phones than enjoying music lately, and I want to take a rest 
Testing phones is funny, but I want to just enjoy music for a while.
Testing phones is funny, but I want to just enjoy music for a while.These are the phones:
For the price, I could say these are the entry phones in the new Meelec’s Clarity series, and certainly they honor the clarity tag. They have 9mm drivers, a common size.
Building quality, appearance. Well, our fellow member ljokerl said in his review that these phones had the least impressive build quality of all Meelec products. I agree but only partly. OK, compared with even the cheapest Meelec models, all of them made of metal, these look cheap because they’re made of plastic, and the finish could be better. But that’s all. Compared with other plastic models I have (almost all of them, as few manufacturers use metal for cheap models), the building quality of these phones is impressive, as is the finish. This said, I find the housings a bit oversized. Look at the photos and judge by yourself about the building quality:
The phones include the usual S-M-L set of single flange silicone tips:
...but also a pair of biflanges and triflanges (too small in my humble opinion):
They include a new type of shirt clip, much better than the usual Meelec one, if you ask me. I hope all Meelec products include this new clip. It rotates, so it’s much more versatile, and easier to remove from the cable:
And last but not least, the new style carrying case, much more rigid than the old one, it is like the SoundMAGIC one, but smaller. It is also smaller in diameter but fatter than the old one, so I wouldn’t say it is utterly better than the usual Meelec case, which for me has a better overall shape. Anyway, I like this one :)
Cable is the usual Meelec high quality cable, with low microphonics and very sturdy. The plug is 45-degrees, but smaller than the usual 45 degrees found in other Meelec models. I really like it, A LOT!
The L/R markings are painted with quite big letters, but I can barely see them in low light. Not a problem, because the housings are different and by touch is very easy to pick the correct one to put in the correct ear ;)
Also, I find the strain reliefs very small. I hope they do their duty.
Comfort, wearing. Well, I can’t say the phones aren’t comfortable. No matter if you wear them with the cable straight down or over the ear, the housings barely touch the ears and wearing them for hours is not a great deal. I have worn them for six hours in a row with no problems.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a decent seal. I tried to wear them in many different forms, including using a pair of really big triflanges so it was the silicone tips the only part in contact with my ears. After a few seconds, minutes if I was lucky, I lost the seal in my left ear. Still, they were darn comfortable, but mostly useless.
After struggling with them for hours, I decided to tag them as unwearable, considering them the most difficult phones to fit I had ever tested. But I’m a good guy, you know, and decided to pass the phones around acquaintances and friends to see if they had the same problem. They didn’t. That really grinds my gears! Nobody had problems with getting a seal with the phones but me!. OK, I must admit that my ears are quite non-standard, but to date I haven’t had any serious problem in getting a decent and durable seal with any phone except these.
The housings utterly prevent in my case to have a deep insertion, so probably that is the problem. Probably a bad combination of ear shape, housing shape, nozzle length and tip material, but I couldn’t get a seal for long, making evaluating the sound quite difficult.
Noise isolation, sound. The tricky bit of my reviews getting trickier. As I couldn’t get a good and durable seal, I couldn’t evaluate sound. If you want to know good details about the sound signature, please read the amazing review made by fellow ljokerl at: http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/478568
I have, though, some comments to make about these phones.
First, about isolation. In my case I have to consider the isolation only mediocre. On average, at most. When I got a decent seal, the isolation was clearly inferior than with other Meelec models I had recently used. To me, this indicates that I wasn’t getting a proper seal, no matter the tests I tried (humming, using test sounds to check seal, etc.).
Second, about sound signature itself. One of the things I could appreciate even without a good seal was clarity. They honor the name, certainly. But not only that, they also have a very good level of detail and balance. Weren’t for the basses, which are in my opinion the only thing that breaks balance, I would consider these phones perfectly valid for critical listening.
Midrange is neutral, as the highs. Well, to be sincere I think this is the best word to describe these phones: neutral. The basses are the only non-neutral part, with big impact, but still they’re controlled and less present than in any other Meelec model except maybe the A151. They’re there, but they don’t stand out. The highs are neutral, too. Good, they don’t sound harsh. Bad, they are not sparkly.
The soundstage, on average or below, but this could be caused by the poor seal.
I don’t want to insist more on describing sound, because as I said before I couldn’t test them properly. I honestly think that the comments above are true and apply to the phones, but that’s all.
Summing up. If you want neutral phones because you like that kind of sound signature of even for some critical listening but don’t want to pay big bugs, these are your phones. Finding neutral phones that cheap is difficult, in my very humble opinion. I find neutral phones a bit fatiguing, but I always want a pair at hand when I have to check new music, before enjoying it with my coloured phones 
The description of the phones promise clarity, detail, enhanced basses, and Meelec keeps their promises with these phones.
The description of the phones promise clarity, detail, enhanced basses, and Meelec keeps their promises with these phones.I certainly had some use for them, but I just can’t wear them so they will go to a friend. They will be put to good use 
And well, that's all. As always, if any of you have any question, feel free to ask.
