Meze Audio launches LIRIC – its first closed-back portable planar magnetic headphone

Baia Mare, Romania, 15 November 2021 – Meze Audio, an award-winning headphone company based in Baia Mare, Romania, announces the release of LIRIC – its first closed-back planar magnetic headphone powered by Rinaro’s Isodynamic Hybrid Array Driver, re-engineered for portable use.

Combining high-grade magnesium, leather and aluminium in an ergonomic design with a sleek, modern finish, LIRIC is made for discerning audiophiles who want to enjoy their passion both in and outside the house or while commuting, for hours on end.

Each material was carefully selected to complete the other, referencing the textures found on magnesium parts of professional photo cameras and preserving that same tactile experience, while demonstrating an outstanding wear resistance.

“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. 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.” – Antonio Meze, Lead Designer & Founder of Meze Audio.

Flagship technology in a portable frame

Created exclusively for Meze Audio, LIRIC’s MZ4 driver was purposefully scaled down and tuned to deliver a similar audio experience with its larger counterpart found in the top-range Empyrean. Combined with the closed-back design, it helps preserve the original clarity and emotion of your favourite music through enhanced sound and minimised external noise.

“It’s been a complex and challenging project to scale down our award-winning technology into a closed-back headphone design. After almost 3 years of intensive work alongside our partners at Meze Audio, we have achieved that goal – with LIRIC, the flagship sound goes truly portable, representing a new milestone in the application of the Isodynamic Hybrid Array technology.” – Pavlo Shymanovych, Founder of Rinaro Isodynamics.

An innovation to the MZ4 driver is the Phase-XTM system, created by Rinaro as a way to minimise phase nonlinearity issues, typically found in closed-back headphone designs. This patent-pending technology helps improve the accuracy of spatial imaging, in line with its open back counterparts, which is especially noticeable on binaural recordings.

A blend of high build quality, excellent comfort and life-like, immersive sound, this headphone is a harmony of form and function meant to set a new benchmark in high-end portable audio. LIRIC is hand-assembled with care and painstaking attention to detail in Baia Mare, Romania.

Meze Audio LIRIC is available now at mezeaudio.com and various US retailers for pre-order worldwide, retailing for $2,000 / €2,000 / £1,850.

About Meze Audio

Founded in 2011 in Baia Mare, Romania, Meze Audio is renowned for timeless design, pure comfort and engaging vivid sound. Winner of multiple audiophile industry awards, Meze’s current product range includes: 99 series headphones (99 Classics, 99 NEO), Rai series IEMs (Rai Penta, Rai Solo) and the two open-back Isodynamic Hybrid Array headphones, Elite and Empyrean.

About Rinaro Isodynamics

Rinaro, a progressive audio engineering company, has been at the forefront of planar magnetic development since the 1980s. From its Cold War origins to today’s state-of-the-art R&D and manufacturing facilities, Rinaro has continued to innovate for the last 30 years, creating the revolutionary Isodynamic Hybrid Array found exclusively in Meze Elite, Empyrean and Liric headphones.