Yeah I feel you, for the past week I’ve been looking at all the different pads you can replace onto the Meze to change the sound of it for better or for worse. I’ve seen so many different padding options and so many people say they love these pads and someone else would say no they don’t sound good they sound horrible on my ears. I know it’s all personal preference, and not being able to test it out on my own ears sucks big time since I’d be blind buying. I haven’t heard anybody talk about the Shure HPAEC1540 Replacement Alcantara pads for the meze 99 classics yet so I’m very interested on why you went with those and how they changed the sound signature for the better.
Here's how it went in my case, I always had my eyes on them but was on the fence for a few reasons, like you said, not being able to try them before buying really sucks and reading completely opposite reviews didn't help either, for instance, on YouTube,
InnerFidelity puts them on his wall of fame in a heart beat....and
Metal571 says that the new pads completely over powers the bass and basically destroyed them.(paraphrasing here...but you get my point)
So I decided to try them anyway because at $399 (Canadian money) I already paid 4 times that for other headphone I own and figured that if I don't like them at all, I could always sell them to recuperate some of my money...and I didn't really believe that pads could change the sound that much, so I went and bought them.
When I got them, I completely understood what
Metal571 meant in his YouTube review, that's when I started to look for different pads option on the web and found out about this thread. Many different pads options were mentioned but none of them were available, either sold out or simply not sold at all in Canada.
The Shure 1540 pads were mentioned a few time in this thread and in different YouTube videos reviews and were available for around $60 in Canada. I have a pair of Shure 940, so I was able to try the 940 pads on my Meze, right away, the bass sounded way more controlled, less boomy, I could almost get the same results with the original pads by lowering the 250 Hz frequency in my Fiio M11 using the EQ but the 940 pads seems to tame the exact frequency that cause the bass to be bloated, better then EQing.
So I went and bought the Shure 1540 pads hoping that they would give me the same results as the 940 pads and maybe a little more controlled bass and more comfort.
I don't know if the 1540 pads are better than the 940 but one things is for sure, I don't regret one second having bought the Meze and the 1540 pads, perfect match as far as I'm concerned..to a point where I feel no desire to search for the perfect sound anymore.
One more thing I must add is that I also bought at the same time the Meze 2.5 mm balanced cable for my Fiio M11, that also made a difference but the pads swap alone made the biggest improvement.
Sorry for the long post, hope that helps.