Meze Audio, the Romanian audio company responsible for iconic headphones like the 99 Classics and their 99 Neo sibling, has announced its latest flagship headphone — the ARTA.
If you want your headphones to look as good as they sound, you’ll probably be interested in these… until you see the price. Meze describes them as “a passion project years in the making, born from the desire to push the limits of conventional headphone sound and design.”
Sure, art is subjective, but we think it’s nailed the latter almost enough to warrant using words like “futuristic” and “bionic fluidity” to describe the ARTA’s design.
What to buy: Meze ARTA or a decent car?
As far as audio goes, a pair of Rinaro’s new MZ5 HΩ isodynamic hybrid array drivers lie at the heart of the ARTA. As a result, Meze says the ARTA delivers “a rich, speaker-like presentation with lifelike detail, offering the most immersive sonic experience [it has] ever created.”
Those planar magnetic drivers are what give the ARTA its “warm-neutral sound signature.” Their “more open presentation” is thanks to the angled acoustic blades that make up the grilles on the earcups, which minimise soundwaves bouncing around and messing up your pristine audio.
These are said to be Rinaro’s highest impedance drivers (225Ω), so don’t expect to take these out with you, unless you also have the budget for a powerful portable amplifier and DAC.
All that is to say, it’s no wonder these are Meze’s most expensive headphones to date. We’re not sure if they’ll make their way to South Africa yet, but it’s possible, considering audio distributors C-Plan Audio have made previous Meze headphones available locally. Their $6,000 price tag will put them out of reach for pretty much everyone who doesn’t have roughly R98,780 to spend on new headphones.
UPDATE 10/06: We’ve heard back from C-Plan Audio. It confirmed it will be selling the ARTA on its site, but nearly $2,500 has been added to the price. The local price will be R140,000.
*At time of writing, using $1 = R16.46 exchange rate, these headphones would have costed less than R100k. The local price… changes that.
