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Great headphones are portable architecture. They act as miniature listening rooms—an Eames lounge chair sitting squarely in a space organic enough to breathe, structured enough to govern every sympathetic resonance. But on your head.
Meze Audio’s new 105 SILVA is one such headphone. It’s less a gadget than a trilogue between disciplines: mid‑century modern design’s disciplined grace, the mix engineer’s mania for vocal clarity, and a Romanian workshop’s obsession with heirloom build. At only $499, this dynamic-driver open-back headphone is not what some audiophiles would call a statement piece (though Meze has plenty of those). At only $499, it’s what I would call a standout—a means to dissolve the distance between listener and performance at an accessible price.
Meze Audio 105 SILVA
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The build
Architecture, melody, and machinery don’t merely coexist here; they trade compliments. The mid-century movement stripped away ornate trim for swooping contours and materials that felt honest—molded plywood, brushed steel, warm‑grain walnut. Furnishings perched on tapered legs, leaving visual “air” around daily ritual. A home took on an unforced, uncluttered, utterly human character.
Similarly, a form-meets-function philosophy is imbued in the 105 SILVA. The radial polymer grille, perforated like a sunburst, reinforces the walnut adding absorbent warmth. The cup geometry behaves like a miniature diffusion panel: reflections scatter while mids stay centered, and stage width feels more amphitheater than headphone cocoon. Sibilance is tamed without muting sheen. Open-back headphones are clerestory windows, venting low‑mid pressure so bass foundations exit gracefully instead of puddling.
But form without fidelity is just an accessory, so Meze over-engineered its 50mm transducer. A carbon fiber-reinforced cellulose composite W-shaped dome nests inside a titanium-coated semicrystalline polymer torus and copper‑zinc alloy stabilizer, featuring precisely positioned grooves at a 45.5° angle. Together, this keeps the diaphragm rigid yet nimble within the chassis, exhibiting snap and verve across the 5 Hz – 30 kHz spectrum, while damping vibrations and banishing distortion to the wings. All within a self-adjusting spring-steel frame with velour ear pads, proven to spread clamp force so geometry—not weight—hugs your skull.
The sound
Ask anyone who has ever been behind a mixing board, and they will tell you that vocal-forward composition, like much of the 20th century’s most memorable fashion and design, succeeds by subtraction. Siphon mud below 200 Hz, fill the crucial 200-400 Hz muscle band where your chest hums, sculpt some space in the 300-800 Hz pocket, then chisel an opening in the 2-5 kHz presence band—the narrow corridor where intimacy and intelligibility live.
The result? Flesh-and-blood immediacy. Kick drums that land with believable heft, delivered from a diaphragm that can stop cleanly on a dime. Bass lines that are thick-bodied, iron-braided. A splintered pick drawn right across your cochlea. Crunch that carves its own lane. But none of it at the detriment of airy, articulate vocals. Spectral and sighing. Grit and girth. Honored intent.
Slam doesn’t impede on headroom, doesn’t tread on transients. Harmonics shimmer without haze. Lush notes linger, unmasked by gratuitous sparkle. Stacked vocals coalesce with micro-detail and macro-cohesion. Expressive voicing isn’t distorted by “wow” frequencies that age into fatigue. Midrange truth feels housed, not artificially highlighted.
Above 10 kHz, you still get some of Meze’s trademark upper-treble shimmer—ride-cymbal sheen, crowd-noise sparkle—but it’s not as laser-etched, as edgy as some planar competitors like HiFiMAN, putting it closer to the equally impressive value that is the $699 FiiO FT7 and its softer glow. Prefer an even more velvety but still resolving response? The $349 Sennheiser HD 550’s performance far exceeds its price point; however, its build quality is undeniably inferior to that of the Meze.
Ultimately, the balance feels curated rather than cosmetic. Compared to its dynamic siblings in Meze’s lineup (shown below), the 105 SILVA is more immediate than the warmer-tuned, Art Deco-styled $399 105 AER, less insistent than the $799 109 PRO’s analytical glaze, possibly prettier than both.
Impedance settles at a friendly 42 Ω and sensitivity at 112 dB, so a laptop jack gets loud while scaling to a DAP or headphone DAC/amp (even something portable like the Questyle M18i) gets incisive. Inside the included hardshell case is a dual-twisted, Kevlar-wrapped OFC cable and USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle—featuring 32‑bit/384 kHz PCM DSD64/128 playback, plus 65 mW output—letting new headphones go directly from box to bops.
The conclusion
Mid-century pieces outlived fads because they solved problems without shouting. Meze Audio headphones aim to do the same, designed as something you want to live with and in. Every component is user‑serviceable, embedding faith in objects built to travel decades, not upgrade cycles. Aesthetically, the 105 SILVA champions restraint as expressive. Sonically, versatility reigns in a headphone that can swing from heavenly to heavy.
