The luxury of planar magnetic comes to sound mixing, editing, and mastering, as Audeze focuses its high-end headphone tech on a new crowd.
Big headphones can absolutely be for the enjoyment of listening to music you love, but they don’t have to be. In fact, before music makes its way to your eardrums by way of those big headphones, musicians and engineers are often donning their own equally big headphones to listen to the music in the mixing stage, and they typically need something a little bit different.
Offering a flatter sound that delivers the sound the way it has been recorded and is being mixed, engineer headphones are often a different bunch. Anyone can wear them, and they’ll typically be as clear and balanced as detailed as it gets, compared to the speaker sound headphone makers often try to achieve.
Take the Sennheiser HD 25: they’re about the most detailed and balanced headphones we’ve ever thrown our ears behind, and made for engineers and DJs alike, while Rode’s NTH-100 are built as a plushier version of something similar.
Rode and Sennheiser aren’t the only brands to attempt this, though, and another big headphone brand is entering the ring with something made for engineers, too: Audeze.
Audeze is a brand not normally associated by all, and responsible for some of the most expensive headphones we’ve seen.
It’s not altogether unusual for Audeze cans to be priced north of a thousand thanks in part to its use of planar magnetic drivers, though its in-earphones are often less and use smaller versions of the technology.
The latest headphones from Audeze don’t shy away from planar magnetic technology, but somehow find a way to integrate it for sound engineers at a less expensive price.
Below the $1K minimum mark we’ve often associated with Audeze’s headphones — which can hit into $3K territory — the Audeze MM-100 includes a newly designed approach for its planar magnetic drivers that allows the headphones to get into a more affordable price point.
It’ll be so affordable that the Audeze MM-100 will cost $669 in Australia when they launch, all while keeping the patented waveguides, diaphragms, magnets, and combination of aluminium and magnesium parts other Audeze headphones have come with, making these just that little bit more interesting.
They’ll still offer a premium feel, thanks in part to gel-filled leather pads and a suspension headband, but the point of the MM-100 may well be to get the price of its planar magnetic sound down to a much more wallet friendly price, which may end up being something that drives sound engineers to a brand they’ve not tried before.
The Audeze MM-100 are on their way to stores in Australia and New Zealand now.
