Cool! I’m glad I explored driving headphones with a speaker amp. I’ll keep that box in mind for a potential future need.
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I believe today we saw the first Caldera to sell under $3K at $2875 including shipping and fees. Probably first of more to come. That’s about 70% of MSRP with taxes and shipping (it had the magnesium upgrade).
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Is the Caldera easy to drive?
Yes. I have to turn the volume up a little more than a Verite or RAD-0, but it’s easily driven by the MZ3, for instance.
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shouldn’t be too different from the D8K, almost identical specs.
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The LTA MZ3 is the exact headphone amp I was considering to get haha
didn’t you buy a Z10E? why would you need a MZ3 as well?
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Since I may not stick with estats. I’m still trying to decide what I wanna keep and sell. If the MZ3 is close enough to the z10e and I decide to sell my estats then I would probably stick with it since it is much cheaper
I remember you have a Susvara right? you’ll need something stronger than the MZ3
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No longer have a susvara. My current collection is OG utopia, 2022 utopia, atrium, caldera, and Stax x9000 and 009
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On that note, I’m still debating which utopia I wanna keep. The five year warranty on the 2022 model is nice and the sound is noticeably better, but I’m not sure how much the value will depreciate (it seems to have held up pretty well so far)
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There’s your answer.
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JDS collab (won’t look like that, colors are from a 3d printed version)
this is actually pretty cool, solid state 4wpc balanced and would be wood/metal combo and tuned for zmf
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He claims it’s going to have an Eikon-ish tuning which for me is kind of exciting to hear, definitely interested to see how it turns out.
I happened to be at ZMF on Friday as I’d lent Zach my Stellia and Celestee to test his solid Focal pads. He had the prototype Atrium closed there, and let me try it for about an hour, using various tube amps plus that JDS collab. I didn’t get a chance to compare it to any other headphones, but from my memory of using the Atrium open a few months ago, the closed had a similar tuning, very smooth but with an extended (but not overpowering) bass. Definitely sounded better with electronic music than I remember with the open.
I only had a little time with the JDS amp, but it sounded very clean and neutral, but not in a “studio clinical” way, it was quite musical.
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Yeah but what wood did he use?
I watched the part of Tyler’s YT where Zach said that the Atrium closed didn’t sound like the open because when he tried to tune it to be the same, it sounded like shit. So my comment above was obviously BS LOL. But that goes to show how your audio memory can play tricks on you.
Removing the attempted comparison, I will stand by my comment that the sound of the closed was smooth, with a nice treble (whereas I did find the Atrium open to be a bit dark for my liking until I switched to a Titan mesh) and also a noticeably full and extended bass. I played mostly rock, alternative and EDM.
I don’t know if the model I listened to was finished, but anyone going to CanJam NY is likely to have the finished product to try.
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I might try and buy one from the show to take home with me. A closed back similar to the Atrium with a nice tube amp can be an awesome way to finish a day… velvet smooth sound.
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That makes me wonder why he sticks to the same name + open or closed. Maybe just a way of keeping momentum from a known name.
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