tomscy2000
Headphoneus Supremus
Here are some of my thoughts:
- Meze has in-house audio measurement equipment and an acoustic engineer (not Antonio, he is an industrial/product designer) --- Mircea Fanatan, but from Meze's own posts on their social media accounts, I have not seen him touch the new IEM projects, i.e. Penta and Solo.
- This is Meze's first hybrid IEM. While they've produced IEMs in the past, they have been purely dynamic IEMs and have not been tuned for high-end acoustic quality. It's entirely reasonable for Meze to hire/subcontract an acoustic design firm (similar to what they've done with Rinaro Acoustics) to help them get off the ground with the Penta. This person/company may have ties to Fidue (it could even be the ever-elusive 'Benny Tan', who Fidue acknowledges is someone who 'produces headphones for world-famous brands'), and even own the IP to the circuit/acoustic design behind both the A91 and Penta. So is it entire possible that Meze has no idea the Penta has a nearly-identical FR to the A91? Absolutely. Their subcontractor likely gave them a few acoustic tuning options and let them choose whatever they felt was the preferred signature.
- Does all this necessarily detract from the Penta as a product? Not necessarily. As mentioned, Meze's strength lies in product design. The Penta gained attention because they showed it off at the same time as the Empyrean --- both models put design and ergonomics at a premium. While the A91 also has incorporated design elements in its shell, it goes for a different, colder, more technocratic look, compared to the sculptural lines of the Penta.
- There are plenty of companies who have given others credit for their sound tuning (in order to gain sonic credibility). For example, Shinola (a Detroit-based accessories company) tapped Campfire Audio to design its Canfield Pro IEMs. Meze itself openly talks about how isodynamic technology is developed by Rinaro. But something tells me that "Rai Penta, tuned by Mr. Benny Tan" won't move as many units. Racist undertones aside, the difference is this: guys like Antonio Meze are regularly on the show circuit, shaking hands and kissing babies. People have interacted with guys from Meze. When someone types 'Meze' onto these threads, and an image of a Caucasian man seated in front of a Mac Pro within a white room comes up, with him in pensive thought, holding a pencil and sketching out the headband form of the Empyrean. Anyone here actually know what Benny Tan looks like? Has anyone held a PM conversation with him? Pictures of him holding Fidue earphones on the interwebs do exist, but surely no one here is on a first name basis with him. The result is a Fidue A91 that, despite making its rounds around the head-fi reviewer circuit, was mostly met with a lukewarm reception, and an IEM with a near identical tuning can be hyped up two years later $200 price hike and all.
- In the past, there have been lots of IEM models that have shared identical drivers and near-identical FRs, e.g. the GQ-30783 in the Westone 2, InEar StageDiver SD2, Audio-Technica ATH-CK90PRO/MK2/IM02 (see more here), but because they all looked different and had different fitment (hence a difference to average insertion angle and depth), they sounded different to many peoples' ears. The Fidue A91 Sirius and Meze Rai Penta share more in common than they don't (see here), but there are still enough ergonomic differences such that the Penta will sound a bit different from the Fidue.
- The main thing is that people know about the high degree of similarity between the Penta and the A91 before they buy, and hopefully get a good head-to-head in-person comparison before making a purchase. Some people might end up liking the accessories package of the A91 over that of the Penta's --- who knows.
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