New Stax: 007-S
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ZMF announce their ZMF Ori 3.0 headphone set for August 29th this year. The retail price seem to be $1999 and itās a closed back planar headphone.
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Iām curious which driver he uses for this.
I think he mentioned it in the video but I didnāt understand it properly.
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I donāt think he mentioned what kind of driver it uses yet.
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New revised HPA-1 to HPA-1c Headphone Amp
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New, with a price increase! 
I guess it was inevitableā¦
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Seems like an RNHP competitor. O.H.M amp. Impedance matching HP
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Thatās really interesting, I wouldnāt put heritage gear anywhere on the level of RND or AMS neve stuff from their studio stuff, wonder how the amp pans out. It is nice to see the pro side of things care more and more about headphone amps, there are too many engineers who have just dismissed headphones entirely cause they just plug them directly into a monitor controller or interface or console with a lackluster output lol (more a thing I see on the mixing/tracking side of things than the mastering guys)
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Pardon my foolishnes, is it the exact same product but now its better at driving very difficult planars? Or is it just more expensive?
I read the whole article but I still didnt get it 
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From what I gathered, itās the same product with improved volume control and some parts replaced due to unavailability.
Source headfi:
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It looks like a slightly redesigned circuit layout, different volume, and potentially improved PSU. Other than that, it looks largely similar to me. That being said in the specs on the page are similar but the power usage only shows 6 watts? is that an error? should be like 30+ for the old one
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I wouldnāt run out and upgrade mine but power is where it all starts, and if Nelson redesigns the power section, Iām sure the c version will certainly be an improvement.
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I donāt think the hpa-1 is a nelson pass design, forgetting the name of the person who designed it, but I do bet itās at least somewhat meaningful improvement otherwise I would just expect they wouldnāt change the name, but at the same time I donāt know if it would be worth it to current owners (at least from whatās been said right now), but remains to be seen for someone to get both in and compare
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In black. lol
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Yes it wasnāt a Nelson Pass design, but I think it was based on one of his novel circuits.
The way I read it, itās incremental improvements to the circuit and predominantly power supply and grounding tweaks.
Once you have a good circuit, itās all about component quality/power supply/grounding/physical layout, and not so much changing the circuit.
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Fair enough
At this moment it seems like its a bit more of a time will tell situation. With a ton of companies slighlty upping their costs and adding small features due to X Y Z.
Good thing is im completely satisfied with my Pass Hpa1 and this incites me no FOMO at all.
What really threw me off the hook is how non-chalantly the article mentions:
āIt features a Class A amplifier and outputs enough power to drive most power-hungry headphones with ease, such as the Hifiman Susvaraā
I dont think the susvara is a good pairing at all for the Pass Labs (compared to the niimbus us4 and the Burson Voyager to name a few examples) so I thought maybe they added something to improve the pairing, but it seems like very minor adjustments only.
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Jam Somasundram
He came to Pass Labs from Cary and moved onto becoming President of Quadratic Audio.
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Thanks, I wasnāt guessing that one lol
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