Fit and Comfort

What you see above is the Meze 99 Neo on a headphone stand that is actually a set of two artificial ears complete with soft-molded human ears and a couple of different adapters acting as the top of the head. This has been mounted on a tripod, which also showcases how headphones would look on a human head, with the artificial ears spaced ~20 cm apart. As with all headphones, getting a good fit and seal is crucial, and make sure to properly use the suspension band and ear cups on the Meze 99 Neo thus. The head-band design works quite well, and the 260 g mass of these is conducive to a secure fit that isn't overwhelming. The cable isn't going to add much weight, and it splitting and going to both ear cups puts its natural resting position down the middle of your chest and body as opposed tilted to the right or left, which may or may not work depending on where your source is placed. The ear cups are also quite comfortable despite the pleather everywhere, though they did get warmer than I'd like in use. The clamping force felt just right to begin with, and stayed there throughout the weeks of testing. Sound isolation is quite good, these being closed-back headphones. All in all, I am quite pleased with the fit and finish.

Audio Performance

Audio Hardware

The actual driver isn't that detailed in itself. The product page confirms it is a 40 mm dynamic driver with what should be a similarly sized diaphragm driven by typical Neodymium magnets. The diagram above confirms the usual configuration for such driver implementations with an associated voice coil, and Meze Audio designed the system to easily be driven from a variety of sources, both portable and desk-based. In fact, the nominal impedance of the 99 Neo is just 26 Ω, so it does not take much in terms of power. It also scales quite well, so much so that the 103 dB/mW sensitivity is average in terms of how loud it can get. Keep in mind that dB, or sound pressure, is logarithmic by nature, so start low and increase to a volume you are comfortable with. These specifications are easily handled by a halfway decent phone in 2021, at least if you have one with a 3.5 mm jack. It was extremely easy to connect these to my phone using a simple USB dongle, as well as my laptop that has a Realtek ALC3266 chipset. Portable DAC/amp setups are the next step up in both sound quality and power, and this is a sweet spot for the Meze 99 Neo, as its feature set keeps portability in mind. Pretty much all desktop amplifiers, including the tiny FiiO K3, will suffice for a more sit-and-use experience, although I would not go with a bass-boosted source for reasons we will get to below. Before we do, I will briefly mention that the integrated microphones do seem like an afterthought as the audio pick-up quality is mediocre, so only use the microphones if you must. The integrated media play/pause button is nice though, with satisfying tactile and lightly clicky feedback underneath a soft rubber body.

Frequency Measurement and Listening

I will mention that I have a general preference for a warm neutral signature emphasizing a slightly elevated bass and smooth treble range with detailed mids and good tonal separation. I also generally prefer instrumental music over vocals, with favored genres including jazz and classical music.


Here is my new headphones test setup, which has a set of two custom in-ear microphones for the two channels. These microphones closely adhere to the IEC711 class, but have been tweaked to be more reliable in the >10 kHz frequency range that was the issue with my previous setup, which is still very good and will continue to be used for IEMs and earphones. Two soft silicone pinnae are installed on the sides, separated by a distance matching my head, and multiple "height" adapters have been 3D-printed to allow for further customization based on fit and head size/shape. Each set of microphones has an XLR output I separately adapted to 3.5 mm, so note that the cable setup in the first photo above is just done for cable management—it is not representative of actual testing. I did power the headphones off a dedicated source, and the sound card seen was used for a quick test as well as the microphone input itself. A 3.5 mm audio jack associated with the right channel also enables recording, as well as real-time monitoring, and potentially audio demos if I am satisfied with the output.

This artificial head simulator feeds into a reference USB sound card, which in turn goes to a laptop that has ARTA and REW running and the headphones connected to the laptop through the sound card and/or a separate DAC/amp if needed. I begin with an impulse measurement to test for signal fidelity, calibrate the sound card and channel output, account for floor noise, and finally test the frequency response of each channel separately. Octave smoothing is at the 1/6th setting, which nets a good balance of detail and noise not being identified as useful data. Also, the default tuning was used for testing, and no app-based settings were chosen unless specifically mentioned. Each sample of interest is tested thrice with separate mounts to account for any fit issues, and an average is taken of the three individual measurements for statistical accuracy. The raw data is then exported from REW and plotted in OriginPro for easier comparison.


[Update] I have replaced some of this section, which was using a less-than-satisfactory measurement protocol, with a new graph from an updated setup. You can find the raw data to compare against on this page

I think it would be fair to say that Meze Audio calling the 99 Neo a balanced set of headphones is a stretch and a half. These are not as bassy as, say, a typical V-Moda Crossfade headphone entry, but there's a still a substantially elevated bass shelf. While bassheads may be happy enough, I am not. There is little sense of preserved detail left because of it, and I dare say some distortion at the crossover from the lower mids to the lows proper. It's almost like someone added an artificial bass shelf via EQ and didn't realize how it affects the rest of the tuning, which is a tale of two takes depending on your preference. If you do fancy the likes of EDM and rock music, where you want presence and energy foremost, the Meze 99 Neo will do a good job. If you are looking for bass guitar notes in jazz music, this is the wrong kind of bass response for you. So while I can appreciate that some will like this, I still think Meze Audio could have balanced these better before claiming a balanced audio signature.

This hurts other aspects as the bass response is just such a jump from the rest. The lower mids in particular may come across as lacking in energy and somewhat anemic. Baritones are a good example, them coming off under-appreciated. Since some of the instrumental details get hazy while others do not depending on the type of audio sources you typically favor, this can hurt imaging or potentially not impact it at all. Soundstage is so-so, but on par with typical closed-back headphones in the price range. The rest of the response is actually fairly balanced, to give credit to Meze. The mids proper I do wish had more range, but there is good tonal separation and detail. Female vocals and drums come off well too, so if you like K-pop, J-pop, and baby metal, these will be a decent fit. Opera performances can be a mixed bag since the dip at 4 kHz relative to the rest hurts higher vocal resonances. This follows the Meze 99 Neo being a mediocre fit for classical music too, especially with full orchestral performances. More specific tones that are treble-centric can fare better here, such as piano performances.


With the source kept constant, there is rapid decay throughout the frequency response. This somewhat alleviates the elevated bass shelf, but there are more divisive factors there anyway. It can help with faster sounds, though. I did think the Meze 99 Neo is actually quite decent for impactful movie watching. Think Michael Bay more than Quentin Tarantino, however. These are alright for gaming, but less so with multi-player games owing to the weaker imaging that can make it harder to identify where your competitors are heading in from.