If you want headphones with craftsmanship and design that exceeds just about anything else on the market, Meze Audio has been the top choice from the $300 price range up the $4000 price range for years now. Headphones like the 99 Classics, 109 Pro, Poet, and Empyrean deliver comfort and build quality that are a step above the competition, while also offering a sound and tuning that’s won many fans on its own. Now Meze is moving things up to the next level with the $6000 Arta. Is Meze able to deliver an ultra-flagship headphone that exceeds expectations not just with the build and design, but with the sound quality and performance as well?
Build and Design
From the moment you open the box, you can tell that Arta is something special. Starting with the sleek but sturdy metal case, Meze delivers an experience that feels like $6000. Inside you get two cables (6.3mm and XLR) both with their own separate leather case, a set of alternate Alcantara earpads, and the headphones themselves. The headphones are a small evolution of previous Meze flagship designs, with a small update to the headband and suspension system, and an all new earcup look, with acoustic reflection panels. The default earpads are a new variation on Empyrean II’s hybrid duo pads, this time with an angle.
In terms of comfort, Arta is absolutely top tier. The weird, balance, cushion, clamp force, and adjustment options are all excellent. This is the sort of headphone where it’s not so much that it’s comfortable to wear for long periods of time, it’s that you’re actually not sure whether or not your head actually feels better with them on than off.
The drivers are also all new here, with fresh engineering from Rinauro Isodynamics. Meze boasts that Arta features the highest impedance planar magnetic drivers ever produced, with the goal of delivering more consistency across sources and a stronger delivery of impact and dynamics. Does this new driver combine with the craftsmanship and acoustic engineering to deliver a true top-of-the-line experience?
Sound
While many flagship headphones focus solely on detail, accuracy, and delivering a high wow factor in the imagine and soundstage, Arta maintains the classic Meze philosophy of balancing detail, accuracy, warmth, and emotion in equal parts. While this might mean that next to other top end headphones, Arta doesn’t stand out for imaging or separation, it also means that Arta delivers an immersive experience where every voice and instrument carries depth and weight.
Arta delivers impressive extension into the deep subbass region, providing physical rumble and a sense of texture to bass instruments. There’s also a strong punch and impact that results in a fun, dynamic feeling to the bass.
The midrange offers weight and thickness with a bit of warmth to the sound. The presentation is full, rich, and lush, and vocals have natural placement in the mix. The layering of instruments and sense of separation is very lifelike and cohesive.
Arta’s treble offers strong fundamentals and enough extension to not feel veiled or rolled off, but there’s a sense of the top-end being more relaxed than energetic, leading to a listening style that’s more laid-back and less in-your-face than many other flagship treble presentations.
In terms of soundstage and imaging, Arta delivers a wide, three-dimensional, speaker-like soundstage that really expands the presentation beyond your head. While the placement and separation is strong, there’s a stronger sense of blending around the instruments in the stereo image, giving you a natural sense of everything existing in real space together, rather than strongly isolating each instrument in space.
Arta’s new drivers provide excellent performance, but it doesn’t come without a cost. This is Meze’s hardest to drive set of headphones yet, with the 225ohm impedance adding some amount of efficiency cost compared to other Meze headphones. Where Empyrean II was pretty comfortable with most portable gear – or even something like a laptop headphone jack – Arta demands more power, and is going to be at its best with higher powered portable devices, or a desktop setup. This still isn’t on a level with Susvara or Modhouse Tungsten, but it is noticeably less driveable on basic setups than most other Meze headphones.
Arta also includes an alternate set of earpads that provides a significant shift in the sound, pushing the soundstage out even further and improving the clarity, while reducing the midbass and rolling off the subbass. If you want to switch it up from harder hitting rock or hip hop to folk or orchestral music, this can be a good option to get a different flavor of sound from Arta.
When the guitar fingerpicking starts on Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Helplessly Hoping” Arta puts you right there, almost letting you feel the vibrations in your own fingers. The acoustic guitar feels incredibly natural and lifelike, down to the small flaws in the sound. The vocals are panned out around the listener, with an intimate presentation that feels like you’ve got Crosby, Stills, and Nash themselves sitting 5 feet away in the room with you. It’s a simple recording, and Arta delivers clean, clear, lifelike simplicity that puts you in the room with the music.
On “Doo Wop (That Thing)” by Lauryn Hill, Arta again delivers a tour de force, with a powerful low end that blends nicely with the rest of the ensemble. Both the sung and rapped vocals are natural sounding and clear, and the rest of the ensemble from the piano driving the rhythm to the accents from the brass ensemble is spread out on a stage in front of the listener. Arta nails the low-end impact with plenty of punch and rumble, without losing the nuance of the vocals, and really impresses with the vocal imaging on the a cappella section midway through the song.
“We’re in This Together” by Nine Inch Nails blends noise, electronic instruments, and innovative use of more traditional instruments in a performance that will make you feel like maybe you’re going a little crazy. Arta delivers a nice separation between each element, so you can decipher the exact nature of the noise (no it’s not coming from your cable, it’s part of the song) and also catch all the intricate textures of the guitars, bass, and synth. The vocals sit just a little bit back in the mix, with a nice sense of dynamics between the almost whispered lyrics on portions of the verse to the half screamed chorus. Arta’s complete presentation helps you lean into the insanity, and pick the whole thing apart while you’re at it.
Comparison: HIFIMAN Susvara, Audeze LCD-5s
If you’re a $6000 headphone, there’s one comparison that you can be sure everyone will make with you: the HIFIMAN Susvara. Along with that, Audeze recent released a new flagship that has a good amount of crossover in the tuning with Arta, the LCD-5s. Is one of these three a clear standout, and is there one that’s going to be the best pick for you?
In terms of the build, design, and included accessories, LCD-5s and Arta are a clear step up from Susvara. The case, cables, and general unboxing experience on LCD-5s and Arta are higher quality as is the build. Arta definitely takes top honors for both wow factor and general comfort, but LCD-5s may win over some fans, with its more minimalist, pro audio rooted design.
In terms of sound, each of these headphones has something great about it, while also having some elements that might turn off some listeners. Susvara is immediately the most technically impressive between the expansive soundstage, extreme clarity and resolution, and holographic imaging, but it’s also the brightest of the three, and most likely to sound fatiguing, while also having the steepest power requirements. LCD-5s captures a pretty strong percentage of Susvara’s detail, imaging, and clarity – maybe even exceeding it at points – with a more impactful bass, and the lowest power requirements here, but it has a bit of “honk” in the mids that can impact vocal delivery and leave some instruments feeling unnatural. Arta matches Susvara for soundstage, but provides the least sense of clarity and separation of the three, while delivering bass rumble and impact that far exceeds what the other two can provide. Arta is also has the least amount of points that might sound fatiguing or be offensive to some ears.
Overall, I find Susvara to still be the best pick for classical, orchestral and film score type music, while Arta is the strongest for more “modern” genres like rock, alternative, pop, and hip hop, and LCD-5s fall somewhere in between: better for rock and pop than Susvara, and better for orchestral music than than Arta, but not the best for either.
The Bottom Line
Arta is, in many ways, exactly what you’d expect, and likely what most Meze fans would want from a Meze flagship. It’s a warmer, more emotional take on flagship headphones, that exceeds Meze’s previous efforts in technical performance while maintaining their core sonic identity. Any way you slice it though, Arta is an incredible set of headphones that elevates the Meze Audio experience to a new level.
