The sound staging with the Elite and my stack is incredible. On well recorded and mastered songs this is intoxicating. The detail and layering with instrumental placement within the stage is blowing my mind. I think I am now a sound stage + detail + airiness junkie. Vocals are just sublime...

Damn it these pads transformed this headphone! OMG I am loving this headphone now! Who would have thought pads can make such a difference? Such a good recommendation. Staging is even better now, no more congestion, maybe just now hearing the MiB and MJ3 to the full extent. Ecstatic.

You were right! These pads do make a difference. And I have come so close to pulling the trigger on Atrium Open stabilized so many times, still not ruling that out. I hope to get a chance to listen to both at Can Jam Dallas in November. I am seriously thinking about building a DIY Aegis amp...

Thinking about ZMF Caldera stabilized to complement with the Elites. I am getting the new angled alcantara pads today and will be rockin those this evening. Those pads are supposed to help quite q bit, so I bought them to try, $200 for the pair. Ouch. But I intend to keep the Elites because I...

I have been running my amp on low gain and push-pull, but it's kind of a toss up really and may be somewhat load dependent. Experiment and see what works best for your ears is ultimately what we all do.

I shined a bright LED flashlight into the vent slats to see if there is any dust building up in there, not seeing anything yet. My amp is dead quiet and no choke vibes either, which is interesting. No cracking or popping noises on power down / cool down whatsoever. Case bottom very slightly warm...

That's a good question. If mounted such that the air flow is drawn from the vent holes in the sides and out the top thru the fans, that will help facilitate heat convection and running cooler. With my fan setup, I am blowing cooler air conditioned air from outside directly onto the heat sinks...

Mainly due to not being able to demo headphones any other way to use with a person's own dac and amp at home. The only other way is a brief audition at say Can Jam, which is noisy, and not your own equipment, and very little time to listen to a headphone. So definitely not an ideal way to try to...

This is why I love reading these threads so darn much. Useful info, from audio nuts for audio nuts... no real biases, just straight up impressions about how stuff sounds. I cannot wait for that day when I can try the Caldera Open with an Aegis amp. I did go ahead and order the alcantara angled...

It was a little over $1k to send mine in to Schiit for the changeover to MiB with shipping, insurance etc. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Should I have just bot MiB to start with? Of course. Just the boards to swap out on your own are still 850, but not sure if there might be some firmware or...

I will order the angled pads for Elite. I like them enough to keep after i get Caldera. Those angled pads are $200 just for the pads. Ouch. But since I was planning on getting a stabilized Caldera in November Can Jam, I need to go ahead and get the pads for my Elites.

I really liked my LiM, I like my MiB even more. Synergies are naturally interpretations of perceptions yes?

Yggdrasil MiB is less tilted to the dark side, and provides better detail resolution. The synergy thing is so important. The LiM is also a great dac, but needs a substantially more neutral amp to pair with it. That is why the synergy with the GSX Mini was so good. The MiB with the MJ3 is better...

I think I am starting to understand the "veil" on my Elites. I doubted it before but after many long multi-hour jam sessions with the Elites on the MJ3 / MiB stack, it's starting to bug me. Not sure if it the veil, or the amp, pretty sure it's not the dac. The MJ3 pumps out the bass, and fairly...

Thank you! The impression I always got from reading hundreds of pages of tube amp threads was that the tube rolling was a mandatory thing to make the amps work at all. Which is one reason I never got into tube amps, but I always wanted to try one. And all I have read about the Aegis makes me...

So from a person who has never heard a tube amp ever, only SS, does the Aegis sound great with the stock tubes it comes with? So not necessarily HAVE to roll tubes? This is probably a really stupid question, but not knowing a darn thing about all these tubes, I would like to think the amp...

Not to be a pain, but can you expound upon the perceptual differences between the 1/4" out and the XLR? Interesting tidbit on phase splitting functionality of the output transformer, explanation on how that happens would be cool. The amp is gorgeous! I want one. I do have a Norne cable...

So is the XLR output balanced?

I do love my MJ3 amp. But the Aegis tube amp seems to be calling my name. LOL Am I headed deep down a rabbit hole here? Very possible. I think my audio disease is going terminal. :L3000:

I got my LiM morphed into a MiB before the MJ3 arrived, so did not get to listen to the LiM / MJ3 combo. However, I can say the MiB / MJ3 stack sounds really nice, similar to the LiM, just more detailed but retaining the inky black background and musicality of the LiM. There is zero grainy or...

So Atrium works well with MJ3?

I have the aluminum version of Elite, with the regular alcantara pads. I plan on purchasing the Caldera, and keeping the Elites for a backup to the Caldera. I really love the Elites a lot, and kind of scratching my head about reading the "veiled" stuff about them. But the Caldera is calling my...

Great review and writeup. On my MJ3, the treble seems really nice, perhaps just very slightly rolled off but then again I know I have some hearing loss in the highest registers unfortunately so take that with a grain of salt. I looked at the alcantara pads included with my Elite, they do not...

Yall are much more genteel than I am evidently. Wrong is wrong. Expletives abound here, trying to be polite (un-characteristic). Splashing someone else's hard-earned designs is just BS. Call it what it is. Like in the flats fishing world, a shyster stealing a hull design by turning it upside...

Super impressive process for headphone creation. One question: does ZMF do all their own resin infusion and wood stabilization in-house? Reading that article from the wood company that specializes in stabilization, they said that is very pains-taking and involved work to do that well and...