Meze Audio

There's a lot going on under the hood of the Meze Audio Rai Penta in-ear monitors — especially for such a compact set of headphones. I could tell these IEMs were special just by holding the lighweight milled aluminum earbud housings. And inside each earbud, Meze packed four specially tuned balanced armature drivers along with a dedicated bass dynamic driver. They also constructed a special airflow system that lowers resonance and helps maintain sonic accuracy. The result is a wide-open soundstage that you might not expect from headphones that fit inside your ears. That, and the highly detailed, well-balanced sound signature that has made Meze a rising star in the world of personal audio. I primarily auditioned these IEMs with the iFi Audio xDSD headphone amp/DAC . The Rai Pentas boast a spacious, outside the head sound with very precise imaging. But when I drove them with the xDSD, I got a better sense of dynamics — the soft and loud stuff in music. I also noticed tighter, stronger bass response that provi...