Review: Audeze MM-500

left earbud will resume the last song you were playing on Spotify if the app isn’t currently open, or play a Spotify recommended track if the app is active.

AUDIO QUALITY

The Jabra Elite 5 headphone has a very flat tuning that the app even identifies as ‘neutral’. There’s also none of the digital signal processing that artificially adds depth and widens the soundstage. Rather than the spatial audio ambitions of Apple, Bose, Sony, and Soundcore, Jabra simply offers a nice (if narrower) stereo image.

Streaming The B-52’s 1979 selftitled album via Apple Music was enlightening. With the Jabra Elite 5, Rock Lobster sounds a lot like it did when I first heard it played on a stereo system at my local record store. Listening to the same track with my second-generation AirPods Pro, there’s more detail in each instrument and a wider soundstage.

Do the AirPods Pro have more appeal for a serious music

The Jabra app allows you to control ANC, change EQ modes, or enable Spotify Tap for the Jabra Elite 5 true wireless headphone. listener? Definitely, but the Apple headphone also lists for £130 more than the Jabra Elite 5. Jabra has put a lot of effort into the total experience with the Elite 5, with audio quality being just one factor in the overall equation.

VERDICT

The Jabra Elite 5 offers a wealth of features given the price point, and it’s those features that are the most compelling reason to buy them. The controls are fantastic. The ANC function is strong and effective without creating the disorienting sense of being in a vacuum. The

HearThrough function is one of the best implementations of that feature in the market. The app is easy to use, the battery life is good, and the call quality is excellent.

While the Jabra Elite 5 headphone performs well across a wide range of scenarios, such as listening to podcasts or audiobooks, taking phone calls, and streaming tunes, they’re not aimed at the high-end audio market.

That’s not a knock, to be clear. Yes, you can find other in-ear headphones that sound better than good or even great for music, but they won’t necessarily have all the other features Jabra offers, and they’ll probably cost a lot more.

Bottom line? If you’re a casual listener and the Jabra Elite 5’s feature set sounds appealing, this headphone is an excellent choice. James Barber

Price: £1,699 from fave.co/3PL4o4k

Audeze isn’t the first headphone manufacturer to try to gain an advantage by enlisting a Grammy-winning audio engineer to endorse its product, but the open-back, over-ear Audeze MM500 planar magnetic headphone might be the only one that doubles as both a professional-grade studio tool and an excellent option for home audio enthusiasts.

The ‘MM’ in MM-500 is Manny Marroquin, who’s one of the most successful audio engineers of the past two decades with hundreds of sessions since the early 1990s with artists as diverse as Bruno Mars, Beyoncé, Imagine Dragons, Alicia Keys, John Mayer, Lady Gaga,

John Legend, Migos, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Kanye West, Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Lizzo, Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Leon Bridges, Ariana Grande, Juice WRLD, Vampire Weekend, Post Malone, Megan Thee Stallion, Ozzy Osbourne, Katy Perry, HAIM and Elton John.

That’s a long list, but there’s a point. Even if you didn’t know his name before, you’ve heard his work on some of the biggest records of the 21st century. And let’s not forget that he mixed tracks on Jon Batiste’s We Are, which won the most recent Grammy for Album of the Year.

Audeze makes a big deal about the fact that Marroquin designed the MM-500 and didn’t just endorse or ‘tune’ them. These cans sound like they were created by and for a professional engineer and Audeze says that Marroquin used the MM500 to mix tracks on Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, an album that joins Lamar’s other albums with its own Album of the Year nomination.

Spending time with this headphone has been a joy, but the MM-500 is at its heart a pro tool that won’t appeal to every listener. If my description of what they do catches your interest, you should find a way to check these out, because they offer a compelling alternative to other highend headphones.

If you’re just looking to store the Audeze MM-500 headphone at home, there’s a satin-lined bag that’s an alternative to the hard-sided road case.

BUILD QUALITY

The Audeze MM500 are built for durability, with a metal band over the head and metal earcups. That means the unit weighs just over a pound. The MM-500 is fine for sitting in one place and listening to music

for an extended period, but they’d be a burden if you used them to walk around with a phone.

Not that you’d be walking around with a phone anyway, because the MM-500 comes with a braided headphone cable that has mini XLR connections to the headphone and a 1/4-inch connector to plug into an audio source. You’ll be limited to using the MM-500 with stationary and relatively high-end audio gear.

These are over-ear, open-back headphones, so there’s going to be some sound leakage when compared to closed-back headphones. The MM500 also use planar magnetic drivers instead of dynamic drivers. Without

digging too deeply into the engineering differences between the more traditional dynamic drivers and planar drivers, know that planar headphones deliver a very detailed and precise signal with less of the dynamic driver artificial bass boost that many It would seem like the best part of having a headphone listeners prefer. deal would be seeing your name embossed on the side The MM-500 of a production model. features a neodymium N50 magnet, what Audeze calls an ‘ultra-thin Uniforce’ diaphragm and a 90mm transducer. Frequency response is 5Hz-50kHz, impedance is 18 ohms and, the recommended power level is >250mW. One design choice that might surprise some listeners is the fact that the earpads are glued to the earcups, so swapping them out on a whim is impossible. There are likely engineering reasons behind this decision, but it’s a choice that might surprise buyers of other headphones in this price range. If you’re just looking to keep the dust off in a studio or your home listening room, there’s a luxe velour

The pads on the Audeze MM-500’s earcups are glued on. storage bag with a satin lining, but travelling audiophiles will appreciate the hard-sided road case with a protective foam lining, a carry handle, and a luggage lock. The case is a massive 11.5x9x7.25 inches, which is giant by consumer headphone standards but is in fact a miniature version of the experience you’d have traveling with a giant wheeled case full of studio outboard gear. The Audeze MM-500 headphone needs an audiophile DAC to deliver the high-resolution signal that justifies the investment.

AUDIO QUALITY

For close listening, I plugged the MM-500 into an RME ADI-2 DAC connected to a MacBook Pro via a USB cable. Since Manny Marroquin used the MM-500 for reference when he mixed the LP, I played a 24-bit 48kHz stream of Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. The detail is remarkable and the ideas behind the collaboration between Marroquin and Audeze are immediately obvious. There’s an extraordinary amount of audio detail here, something that’s perfect