Massdrop x MEE audio Planamic In-Ear Monitors

The Planamic in-ear monitors use an entirely new type of driver, designed in-house by MEE audio with feedback from the Massdrop team and community. Combining the benefits of planar-magnetic and dynamic drivers, this design yields a sound unlike any other in our IEM lineup. Warm, coherent, impactful, liquid, and rich, it has a different timbre than you’d get from dynamic or balanced-armature IEMs. The 10-millimeter driver’s single-sided magnet delivers a flatter wavefront of sound to your ear, while its flat impedance means the frequency response won’t vary wildly depending on the source. Listen directly from your phone or experiment with various portable DACs and amps. Featuring a universal-fit housing that shares characteristics from our most comfortable designs, the Planamic comes with both braided and mic-equipped cables, among other accessories.

The result of more than a year of development, including eight-plus prototypes, the Planamic was born of MEE audio’s belief that the most coherent-sounding systems are based on single drivers. So rather than pursue a hybrid or multi-driver structure, the company set out to develop a new driver that addressed the common issues seen in planar magnetics. The upside of a planar-magnetic driver is the flat sonic wavefront it produces; the entire surface of the driver moves in a single plane due to the traces and driver magnet structures. The downside is that the size and weight in the ear can be much greater than that of a dynamic or balanced-armature driver. This means most planar-magnetic IEMs are large and open-backed, isolating poorly—something MEE audio wanted to avoid. The solution: modify the traditional dynamic driver design to derive the pros of planar magnetics without the cons.