Best way I can describe the Caldera in comparison to other headphones is as a mix between the Susvara and D8000 Pro. There are some things that the susvara and d8kp do better, but overall, it seems to share a lot of similarities with both. It has that balanced tonality and presentation that susvara is so well known for, and is similar to the d8kp in dynamics and imaging.
Disclaimer: I haven’t listened to the susvara or d8kp in a while, so I am saying all of this out of memory, and we all know how deceiving audio memory can be lol.
I will be able to directly compare it to the susvara in a couple of weeks and I will save my full impressions until then. For now, I can say that it is definitely summit-fi tier (same tier as susvara, d8kp, and utopia). It isn’t perfect of course, it has some weak points (I think impact and soundstage width could be better), but imo it is well worth the 3-4k price tag given the competition. I am really hesitant to say it is the best headphone in its price range or to point out flaws until I can directly compare it to the susvara.
Hey that’s my Kingwood
The Kingwood looks really nice in person. Have a nice dark purple color to it in some angle of the light. The new Redheart and Bocote looks nice as well. My favorite one is Redheart mainly because I like red. Wish it had a silver grill like the Kingwood did.
My favorite part of the Kingwood is that it has a steel grill. I personally really like the look of the steel grill. It makes the headphone looks more luxurious. I wish the other LTD wood has the steel grill.
What are the general differences between Caldera and Atrium…? I haven’t heard a ZMF yet, and I don’t know if Verite is still a good option, with the variances between open & closed models. Do people generally prefer Atrium over Caldera and the Verités…?
Based on what I seen in other forums, there are a small amount of people that prefer the Atrium over the Caldera. The reason is probably because they want more “midrange magic” and holographic soundstage. The Caldera is said to be highest resolution out of all the ZMF headphones and when I had them, it sounded crystal clean. The Caldera may not have a huge soundstage like the Atrium, but it has a pretty wide soundstage and probably the best instrumental separation I ever heard in a headphone. For the Verite, sorry, I do not know too much about that headphone.
There are also report that you can actually get a holographic soundstage with the Caldera using a tube amp, but I didn’t have a good tube amp at that time to test that theory.
I remember some newer ZMF-listeners here saying that the damping system on the newer models basically makes all the woods sound the same (but I haven’t heard any new ZMFs since the release of the Atrium).
Another thing to account for is what kind of system you have. If you got a amp that can power 300 ohms with ease, the Atrium might be better. The one thing I like about the Caldera is that it’s been called a chameleon and will changes flavor depending with your amp. The Caldera is also very easy to drive, so you probably could plug the Caldera to almost any amp and still enjoy it. I only experience it with the Cayin HA-3A and NITSCH Piety and the Caldera works great with both those amps. But you’ll probably still want to get a good planar headphone amp since the Caldera is a planar headphones even though it sounds pretty dynamic.
Personally, I like dark and/or red wood, so the redheart hits the spot for me.
I had previously borrowed a Caldera for a couple of weeks and knew that I wanted to buy one, because it hit all my preferences, but the original wood was a bit subdued for my taste, as I wanted something bolder. I loved the look of the one-off redheart Atrium in one of their previous sales, and I was happy to see that Zach decided to do a limited run in both the Caldera and Atrium.
Since I live locally, I was able to pick up this redheart Caldera. My photos haven’t done them justice but it’s the best I could do on my phone (I tried playing around with the color in Microsoft Photos and may have made it worse LOL).
I feel sometimes Zach grabs 1 color and tries to make it all that one thing. Which is all taste but imagine the redheart with stainless steel or the gold/brass grilles?
Also they chose some dense heavy woods for the Caldera.
From what ive seen the baffle and dampening system use the same wood no matter what the outer beauty wood is. With that being the most important part of the sound then yeah, the rest of it adds much less.
I know right, I got excited when I saw the ad with the redheart with stainless steel, but Zach said it was because of the lighting that it looks like that. The redheart will like black grills looks great too, but I do prefer stainless steel.
