Did someone say they used an Audeze balanced cable and it worked fine w/ the Empyrean?
Meze EMPYREAN - the First Isodynamic Hybrid Array Headphone
- Thread starter MezeTeam
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Whazzzup
Headphoneus Supremus
well id hope a HP can hear layers, well flagships in general
The frame has that textured look up close? Looks awesome.Hi, yes, the customer has all the right to ask for a replacement if there is a white dot, and we will replace.
But it is more complicated that that.
Usually milled aluminium is polished and sandblasted.
CNC milling means that a drill carves out the entire shape thus leaving behind a trail. Polishing evens out this trails(marks) left behind by the drill head. The sandblasting creates an even grainy surface (such as mac laptops). Final effect is a smooth textured surface.
The anodizing means basically oxidizing the surface. Anodizing is not adding an extra layer but corroding the top surface of aluminium thus creating a barrier. In this process you can add pigment which enters this corrosion crevasses.
But we didn't do this. Because (to the dismay of my team) I usually choose the hard way in order to create something unique:
What we did was to work like crazy until we go an nice even milling tool path effect and then directly anodize it. This means that there is not polishing or sandblasting to cover up any imperfection caused by milling. This process causes causes a lot of extra cost and headache due to the very high scrap rate.
Bellow a closeup of this type of milling texture on a prototype I am working on for a new IEM. This texture is made with ball head milling head. This picture is from early 2018 and i still didn;t release this model with this texture just because we still weren't able to stabilize this texture in mass production. (We will release it first without texture and keep working on this texture for future releases). We are fanatic about making something special. Not choosing the easy path. We could have simply made a casting tooling like everyone else and cast all the Empyrean aluminium parts and then paint them and you would have a frame with same surface effect like all other aluminium headphones frames.
As you can see in the image above the surface consists of "hills and valleys". It is very difficult to create an even anodizing color effect across the entire surface when your surface is textured like this.
White dot means the anodizing didn't fully take effect on on of those countless surfaces.
Bellow is closeup of Empyrean texture which I am super happy to have achieved after great difficulties.
It's necessary to understand that this frames as a sort of craftsman's work that is not at all like serialized mass production. It's like a carving with a CNC machine. Even if there is a programming in the machine, the outcome will not be always identical at microscopic level and the the anodizing will just reveal that. And due to the extremely high detail and the countless facets created by the mill on the surface of the aluminium it is very very hard to achieve 100% even coverage.
xxx1313
500+ Head-Fier
For me,
THESE. ARE. KEEPERS!!
Cayin IDAP-6 -> Schiit Gungnir Multibit -> Schiit Mjolnir 2 with Lorenz Stuttgart tubes -> Balanced Q Audio Cable -> Empyreans
AND HiBy R6 -> Empyreans
I was amazed at how good they sounded straight out of the R6 DAP!
Will probably put my LCD-4 up for sale soon.
Cheers and Thanks Team Meze!!
- HK sends
P.S. - Just using the leather pads so far...
After my first audition of the Empyrean in May it was already clear to me that this headphone will be a great complement to many other cans as well as an Audeze LCD killer. I am not saying that the LCD-4 is a bad sounding headphone, but the Empyrean does so many more things just right, imo. Enjoy your new Meze Empyrean!
Believe it or not, years ago I managed to sneak in his office, ( room ) at Castle Bran, in Transilvania, Romania and stood on his mighty armchair.
Wish I had a camera, but at least the sensation was great.
I have listened to the LCD i4 from the Dave/HMS as well as the Empyrean, albeit st different times, so not a direct comparison (I should have done that while I still had the Empyreans on demo
). From memory I would rank the Empyrean ahead of the LCDi4 in this setup.
lithiumnk
500+ Head-Fier
Thanks @Mikey99.I have listened to the LCD i4 from the Dave/HMS as well as the Empyrean, albeit st different times, so not a direct comparison (I should have done that while I still had the Empyreans on demo
koenoe
100+ Head-Fier
Still need to figure out how to publish reviews on Head-Fi, but I just published it on Medium: https://medium.com/@koenromers/fight-for-the-throne-audeze-lcd-4-meze-empyrean-165c1740b027
Yes, I used a balance cable for Audeze on the Empyrean and it worked great! It was terminated wit a 4-pin XLR plug.
Cheers!
-HK sends
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Okay, is anyone gonna answer this for me or not? Did the carbon/finish change on the prototype to the finished version?
The carbon finish on mine looks like your first picture but the band feels like metal (it could be carbon fiber). Hope that helps.Okay, is anyone gonna answer this for me or not? Did the carbon/finish change on the prototype to the finished version?
Cheers!
-HK sends
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The one to the left is from another members pic from his review, the one to the right is the version from Canjam Socal of this year. It's similar to the LCD series of carbon bands
Yeah, that second picture looks like the one on my LCD-4. The weird thing is the LCD-4 headband feels lighter and what I am used to carbon fiber feeling like (I promise, I'm not a pervert), while the Empyrean headband feels colder, stiffer, and more like metal. But it does look nice.
Cheers!
-HK sends
hahaYeah, that second picture looks like the one on my LCD-4. The weird thing is the LCD-4 headband feels lighter and what I am used to carbon fiber feeling like (I promise, I'm not a pervert), while the Empyrean headband feels colder, stiffer, and more like metal. But it does look nice.
Cheers!
-HK sends
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