A slam dunk at High End Vienna: Audeze unveils pro-mixing headphones with huge 90mm drivers (and yes, proprietary SLAM technology too)

Audeze has unveiled the MM-520 headphones at High End Munich
These are professional studio cans with 90mm drivers
They cost a relatively reasonable $1,699 (about £1,250, AU$2500)

We are in the middle of the massive audio convention High End Vienna, so every day offers a multitude of top speakers or professional headphones for the price of a small car. So Audeze’s new cans look almost affordable by comparison (spoiler alert: they’re still pretty expensive).

The brand has unveiled the Audeze MM-520, professional studio as part of its Manny Marroquin-branded range (he’s a hugely successful mixing engineer – you knew that), which succeeds the MM-500s. These are cans with an open back, designed for professionals.

I did say these look affordable, but that’s only in comparison; these new headphones cost $1,699 (about £1,250, AU$2500), so they won’t find a place on our best cheap headphones list any time soon – but they may well join the ranks of our best wired headphones if we can get our hands on a set for a thorough review. As it sounds, they are on sale right now, from the brand’s website or hi-fi retailers.

SLAM them down

One of the biggest selling points of the MM-520s is their use of Audeze’s proprietary SLAM technology. Nothing to do with basketball dunking or tequila sodas; this stands for Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modular. Yes, it’s a series of four adjectives without a subject. Pedants, I’m sorry and I keep calling it SLAM.

SLAM is technology focused on the low end: it improves how bass sounds and creates a wider soundstage in this frequency range. It’s about “optimizing the air pressure” using the open design, to improve the bass without affecting the neutral sound so much.

Other improvements to the MM-520 come to the design: the memory foam earpads have seen a change, and Audeze says they’re more comfortable to wear for long periods.

Like their predecessors, they use 90mm planar magnetic drivers, with a super-thin diaphragm and phase control to avoid distortion. They offer a frequency response of 5Hz-50kHz, with an impedance of 18 ohms and 102dB sensitivity.

Audeze lists the MM series in its Professional category, so they’re clearly designed for engineers or designers (if the price didn’t give it away).