Not disagreeing with you here, but I always found the stock lambskin pads on the AC sort of holds it back from it's full potential technical wise because of the high bass boost. I feel that those lambskin pads are more suitable when your source chain are on the analytical side. To my ears, the...

The expression on your cat is pure gold I think he is indeed pleased with your amp

Thanks for the detailed write up, really is appreciated. What pads did you use for each HP in the comparisons?

Chord DAVE has quite large soundstage, among largest in the DACs ive heard. Chord TT2 has decent body and but slighly less soundstage. The Burson amps are also a more budget friendly option but still also deliver a large soundstage. Bartok has slightly lower soundstage than DAVE but has more...

I find the dcs forums to be more useful to get more info on the bartok. Personally I feel the Bartok is one of the most well built products in audio. Alot of these high end dacs are often so clunky to use that they feel like a product still in beta. The Bartok on the other hand is a...

Tomas' amps are magical when you pair the high-z output and a high-z HP such as your HD800. I got similar results with my Beyer T1 and ZMF Atrium closed. Personally the amp improve the atriums' performance level close to that of uber TOTL HPs.

Thank you for these detailed write ups. People like me who don't get a chance really appreciate it

There is something magical about the atrium biocell driver combined with the ADS. In particular it's spatial qualities stand out I find that to get best results, you to go high gain or impedance settings on your amp. This will increase the tonal density and richness of notes. With this all the...

I nabbed a pair of NOS RCA 6550s for a good price but USPS just updated me today that the package is pretty much lost. Its been two weeks past the supposed arrival date. Am super annoyed about that. Was in the same boat as you when I returned one of my HPs for repair. USPS is really not to be...

Pikachu sticker increases power output and dynamic range btw ;)

TOTL Listening away from home. Travelling abroad this week and decided to bring diablo idsd (1st gen) with the AC. Even with the Caldera suede pads, the diablo provided decent soundstage and reasonable amount of bass heft and detail. Great clarity with mids and treble. Using the moon audio blue...

Visual art meets sonic poetry

Happy for you buddy Personally I'm keen to try the bokeh suedes sometime in the near future

It wouldn't - just highlighting that easy pad swapping is an additional feature that ZMFs have

You can pad roll with ZMFs. Doing that in LCD-4 is impractical as they are glued onto the chassis.

Silly question: has anyone tried their ZMFs with the Audio-Technica NARUKAMI - the $100k beast? Putting aside all notions of affordability and cost-effectiveness - how does it pair?

how are fellow LCD-4z owners doing these days? I was just wondering if you tried pairing the 4z with a tube amp and how you found it? It might sound silly to pair a 15-ohm headphone with a tube amp, but it actually has worked out quite well for me.

Atrium is a completely different beast from LCD-4 and Caldera. The latter two have more in common with each other, and it might be worthwhile investigating further.

Yeah not only he's an amazing person, but I used to look forward to the end of the month when he unveils a new build. It was so cool to see everyone's amp and unique features its had.

Still loving my Telly like it was new. High impedance headphones really scale nicely with tube amps. Especially when you switch it to the high-impedance output of the amp.

PassionForSound mentioned that its a nice in between between caldera suedes and thins. I have not yet been able to confirm this though.

This is an interesting review about the AO. I thought I would share the video since we just discussed using tube amps to get the most out of the AC. TLDR The reviewer said that if matched with an OTL, the HP's performance is near that of the Susvara. He attributes the benefits to the HP's...

Good find... anyone else have experience with bokeh suedes?

Personally I think the Caldera would be a better compliment to the AC. I feel the Caldera would be more a significant difference to the AC. If you look at the AC thread, many of us are also owners of a planar HP as the two sound really different from each other allowing for a variety of sonic...

Atriums, both open and closed pair well with SS amps. But when you pair it with a high impedance tube amp, the results are nothing short of breathtaking...