Meze Audio unveils Liric, its first closed-back portable planar magnetic headphones

Meze Audio Liric planar magnetic headphones
(Image credit: Meze Audio)

Meze Audio, the decade-old dedicated headphone outfit based in Baia Mare, Romania, has just announced the release of Liric – its first closed-back planar magnetic headphones powered by Rinaro’s Isodynamic Hybrid Array Driver. These are the same units from the Meze Audio Elite proposition, now re-engineered for portable use.

Meze Audio's Liric headphones combine high-grade magnesium, leather and aluminium in an all-new ergonomic design. The sleek, modern finish was designed to reference the textures found on magnesium parts of professional photography cameras.

“We’ve been wanting to do a portable planar for a while, and following two successful collaborations with Rinaro, it was a natural next step," said Meze Audio founder Antonio Meze, adding, "naming it Liric was not a game of chance. It was an ideal metaphor to paint the authentic, vivid and poetic sound disguised behind its sculptural silhouette.”

Meze Audio Liric planar magnetic headphones

(Image credit: Meze Audio)

Created exclusively for Meze Audio, Liric’s MZ4 driver was purposefully scaled down and tuned to deliver a similar audio experience to its larger counterpart, found in the top-range Empyrean, then combined with a closed-back design.

To do this, Meze Audio partner Rinaro created the Phase-XTM system, a patent-pending technology promising improved spatial imaging accuracy, in line with its open-back counterparts (especially noticeable on binaural recordings).

Meze Audio Liric headphones are hand-assembled in Baia Mare, Romania, and they are available now for pre-order worldwide, priced £1850 / $2000 / €2000 (roughly AU$3395).

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Becky has been a full-time staff writer at What Hi-Fi? since March 2019. Prior to gaining her MA in Journalism in 2018, she freelanced as an arts critic alongside a 20-year career as a professional dancer and aerialist – any love of dance is of course tethered to a love of music. Becky has previously contributed to Stuff, FourFourTwo, This is Cabaret and The Stage. When not writing, she dances, spins in the air, drinks coffee, watches football or surfs in Cornwall with her other half – a football writer whose talent knows no bounds.