Meze Audio has built its reputation on headphones that combine distinctive craftsmanship with an engaging, refined sound. The Meze Arta takes that philosophy into flagship territory, pairing an elaborate open-back design with an advanced high-impedance planar magnetic driver developed by Rinaro. At $6,000, it enters one of the most competitive corners of the high-end headphone market. Let’s examine its build quality, comfort, interchangeable ear pads, soundstage, and overall sound performance to determine whether it delivers an experience worthy of its flagship price.
What You Get
- Meze Arta planar open-back headphones
- Carrying case
- Two silver-plated cables
- 4-pin XLR
- 1/4 inch
- Two sets of ear pads
- Hybrid lambskin
- Alcantara
Look & Feel
The Meze Arta is simply a beutiful looking set of headphones. It takes after the main construction of Meze’s Empyrean line and makes it even more luxurious, which you kind of expect considering the $6000 price point. In terms of appearence, the Arta earns it, with its sculpted metal earcups and grille blades that communicate a carefully crafted design. All of its peices feel intentioanlly placed, each part working together to assemble a flashy but practical headphones for long term listeneing and long term value. A good looking headphone means nothing if it isn’t comfortablel, and thankfully the Arta is as comfortable as any of Meze’s other headphones. It’s a circumaural design that sits nicely over your ears and rests on your head seccurly, no matter which earpads you choose.
Design
The Meze Arta uses Rinaro’s MZ5 HΩ High Impedance Isodynamic Hybrid Array driver, described as the highest-impedance planar magnetic headphone driver developed to date. Operating at an average impedance of 225 ohms, its high-voltage, low-current design is engineered to improve linearity, stability, and signal purity. The driver delivers a frequency response of 3 Hz to 115 kHz with total harmonic distortion below 0.05%. Angled blades within the open-back acoustic grille further reduce internal reflections for cleaner transients and a more spacious presentation.
Soundstage
Part of the fun of listening to the Arta is switching between the Alcantara and hybrid ear pads to spot differences in sound reproduction. The soundstage of the Arta was the first thing the really jumped out to me when switching pads, and it heavily impacted the entire experience of listening to these headphones. Using either set of pads will give you a wide and expansive soundstage that’s holographic and percise, but if you want the best immersion possible, use the Alcantara pads.
The hybrid pads are great for providing carved out, accuratly positioned sound elements, but with the Alcantara pads, the soundstage takes on an almost completly different persona. It expandes the display of sound even further, which seems almost impossible if you listen to the hybrid pads for an extended amount of time and switch over. There’s no way a headphone can sound as open and spacious as this, but the Arta finds a way just by switching the pads.
There’s no clear barriers to the level of spatial imaging on display. It places you in the middle of the performance while all the instruments and sound effects hover in the open air. Everything has a specific origin point in the left and right channels, making use of blank space to not only separate each element, but express the distance between them. This is due to the Arta’s phenomenal sense of dimension, as you not only get accuracy, but the instruments have angles to them, recreating a live setting effortlessly.
The percision of pan movments is also vital to how well the Arta articulates space, taking advantage of every inch of headspace to communicate a livley sonic environment. Sounds wrap around you like a dome, kick drums poud at the back of your neck, and ambient pads completly surround you. There’s a version of this kind of expansion with the hybrid pads, but with the Alcantara, everything protrudes outward, reaching a whole other level of how open and speaker-like some headphones can be.
Low EndÂ
At first, the Arta’s bass doesn’t jump out at you, but once they unravel it really shines. You might not get significant slam or impact, but detail is potent and extremely resolving, especially in the sub-bass region. It’s a rich timbre that has an incredible amount of depth, but what makes the bass so engrossing on the Arta is how the sub-bass emerges from a place with real physical ground.
It developes this envigorating tone that has natural vibration, and the clarity is so vivid that the bass constantly feels like its emerging from beneath you. It’s slow, but full and smooth, and most importantly feels alive. There’s hard hitting impact, but it’s is not as impressive as its overall clarity and realism. Headphones with this kind of low end extension can sometimes be neutral or dry, but the Arta has a texture to it that keeps the bass musical, like the frequencies are always on their feet and giving them a sense of constant movement.
Mids
In the midrange, the Arta exhibits a defined tonality that is also very colorful. It leans toward a slightly darker character but maintains a sense of uncompormised clarity that keeps everything out of a hazy cloud. There’s warmth and body to a wide variety of instruments, and they are lifted forward allowing individual elements to appear complete. The Arta wants to show you everything, and the midrange helps that by expressing this crisp tonal shape that showcases real instrumentation and note quality.
Vocals are elevated and similarly detailed, with the emphasis still on the lower side of the midrange. This gives both male and female vocals a sense of presence, but the mid-treble is left to be more reserved. There is a more relaxed quality to the mids in this range, especially when using the hybrid pads. The Alcantara pads let these frequencies breathe a bit more, but it’s clear the emphasis is still on the low-mids.
Highs
The high end frequencies on the Arta find a happy medium between resolving detail and tight control. Like the rest of the frequency resposne, the treble offers flavorful musicality that is easy to digest. Microdetails make themselves known through the Arta’s ability to showcase defined rings that decay and release quickly. Sparkly in timbre, but attenuate before the frequencies can truly glisten. This doesn’t take anything away from the character of the treble, it just makes sure the tone is satisfying while still feeling natural.
Summary
The Meze Arta is a remarkable flagship planar magnetic headphone that distinguishes itself through luxurious craftsmanship, exceptional comfort, and an extraordinarily expansive soundstage. Its presentation favors depth, dimensionality, and natural detail over exaggerated impact, producing a rich sub-bass response, colorful midrange, and controlled treble that remains musical during extended listening sessions. The two included ear pads also provide meaningful variations in presentation: the hybrid pads offer tighter positioning and a more relaxed balance, while the Alcantara pads unlock the Arta’s most open, immersive, and speaker-like performance.
At $6,000, the Arta is designed for listeners seeking more than pure technical accuracy. Its combination of lifelike imaging, resolving detail, and inviting tonal character makes every recording feel spacious and active without becoming clinical. While listeners looking for aggressive bass slam or brilliant upper-treble energy may prefer a different tuning, the Meze Arta delivers a luxurious and deeply involving listening experience that stands comfortably among today’s elite open-back headphones.
The Meze Audio Arta is available at Audio46.
